Teapot

Description

During the mid to late 1700s the fashion for neoclassical design as well as an increased interest in natural history drove the creation of many seashell-themed designs. This double-shell-shaped teapot may have been used on an elegant tea table featuring carved seashell ornament. This earthenware type is known as agateware and was intended to imitate patterns found in natural stone. Such stone, during the 1700s, was fashionable for use as inlays on objects, such as boxes, or in architectural settings. Ceramic agateware was produced in Staffordshire, England in lead-glazed earthenware (as shown here) and salt-glazed stoneware. Labor-intensive to produce, some agateware required kneading different colors of clay together before rolling it out and pressing it into molds. Careful cleaning of the surface exposed crisply defined colors. (For a similarly modeled shell teapot in variant agateware colors, see 2024.0014.019 A, B.) Presumably a bit less costly to consumers was agateware created by throwing multi-colored clays on the wheel, as was true for some beverageware at Winterthur (see 2024.0014.017 A, B). Eighteenth-century documentary references as well as archaeological evidence from American sites prove that agateware was fashionable here during the colonial period. Period terms for agateware include "agate" and "marbled" typically followed by the object type, as in “teapot.” (For more on early references and archaeological material, see Grigsby, “British Earthenware and Porcelain in Eighteenth Century America” under References.)