Custom-Made for America

Walking though a museum’s campus the morning after a wedding, I came across a remnant of celebration: a pair of blue plastic sunglasses, emblazoned “Kristen & Corey 2016.” Picking them up, I held a physical memorial to a ceremony that was being packed away around me. Lost or left behind, however, this particular pair of glasses had not been cherished as closely as the occasion might suggest—and now I, a complete stranger to Kristen and Corey, possessed a memento from their wedding. But perhaps they wouldn’t have minded. After all, I’d only found a pair of cheap sunglasses, customized, yes, but likely ordered in a few clicks from an anonymous corner of the Internet.

Like most things that the Internet has made easier, however, customizing mass-produced products is hardly new. Before plastic sunglasses, indeed, before the American Revolution, European manufacturers had already begun to produce textiles, glassware, and, particularly, ceramics, for specific foreign markets. In the American colonies, demand was strong: colonists consumed a quarter of England’s exports by the mid-eighteenth century. Used to working with an overseas market, savvy potters calculated that American customers would wear strong political sentiments on their sleeves, or, at least, their teapots. And they did.[i]

Teapot, Staffordshire, England, 1766-1770.  Earthenware (Creamware).  Colonial Williamsburg 1953-417

America was an equally important market after the Revolution. By the 1860s, Americans purchased one third of all ceramics exported from Staffordshire, England, the heart of the British pottery industry. America was a valuable market for several reasons. As a new society with no hereditary rank and a large and growing middle class, Americans valued objects as a way to demonstrate respectability. Wealthy families rushed to buy imported ceramics, textiles, and architectural marbles for their homes, and the middle class followed suit. As citizens of a new republic, Americans were also busily creating a new national identity for themselves, and were, perhaps, therefore more attuned to symbolism on material goods. Overseas manufacturers obliged.[ii]

Bottle (Guglet), Staffordshire and Liverpool, England, 1790-1795.  Earthenware (Creamware).  Winterthur Museum 1971.727.

Pitchers, jugs, and carafes like this one became relatively common in the new republic. This particular carafe was commissioned by James Jefferis, an American sea captain, on a visit to Liverpool in the early 1790s. At the time, both the city of Liverpool and the American merchant marine were on the rise, and both would become the dominant players in maritime trade in the next few decades. This carafe, and other “Liverpool Jugs” like it, were souvenirs of a burgeoning international entrepot.

Liverpool’s potters made full use of the flexibility offered by the ceramics manufacturing process to make vessels like this. Customized pottery had to be completed quickly, so that a captain could receive a finished vase before his ship loaded its next cargo. The body of the carafe, therefore, was mass produced beforehand, likely in nearby Staffordshire. As such, it was not unlike the ceramics waiting on the shelves of paint-you-own-pottery shops today. The first round of decorating was similarly generic: though the ship looks unique, it is a stock image, engraved on a copper plate and transfer-printed onto hundreds of pieces of pottery. It could be printed in Staffordshire or Liverpool, as long as the maker was assured of a maritime audience. In the busy port of Liverpool, that was a safe bet.[iii]

Detail, James Jefferis carafe, Winterthur Museum 1971.727.  Note that there are no black lines from the background print around the flag, allowing the decorator to freely paint any nation’s colors.

The last step in the decorating process was adding color. Because pigmented enamels could not withstand the high firing temperatures needed for the glaze, they were added last, almost certainly in Liverpool. Looking closely at the vase, we can see that the flag was not part of the printed stock image—it was painted entirely by hand with red and blue enamel. Likewise, the ship’s pennant, the color of its sides, and the inscription bearing James Jeffris’s name were all added by hand. By completing this last step of the decorating process in Liverpool, merchants and manufacturers could customize individual vases precisely to customer demands.

Vase, Upper Ferry Bridge and Fairmont Water Works, Philadelphia.  Bohemia, 1835-1860.  Glass and Enamel.  Winterthur Museum 1975.222.

In the early nineteenth century, British potters also looked to specific, though anonymous, American markets, creating pieces that would appeal to local audiences. Dishes with local scenes like the Boston Almshouse or Philadelphia’s Upper Ferry Bridge appeared, and met with success. Aided by a growing print culture that circulated such images, European manufacturers helped their American customers celebrate the new nation’s civic, charitable, and engineering monuments on china and glassware.

Jardiniere, ‘Almshouse, Boston,’ from the Beauties of America Series.  J&W Ridgeway, Hanley, Staffordshire, England, 1822-1830.  Earthenware (Pearlware).  WInterthur Museum, 1958.1923.

Appealing to very local interests had its pitfalls, however, particularly when a piece had to be fashionable as well. A gorgeous Bohemian cut-glass vase, made between 1835 and 1860, shows the lengths that a manufacturer might go to keep their decorating options open.

Vase, Bohemia, Czech Republic, 1840-1860.  Glass (non-lead).  Winterthur Museum, 1992.119.2.

The easiest way to make a colorful cut glass vase like this one was to blow the object in clear glass, dip it in a stain to cover the outside, and then grind away specific areas to form the red and white pattern. This maker, however, was apparently unwilling to commit to a red vase so early in the manufacturing process. Instead, he cut the design first, leaving a large oval blank in the front for the final image, and then hand-painted the red stain around each part of the pattern. The Baltimore Battle Monument was added last.  This was a finicky process, one that opted for adaptability over easy manufacture.

When glass is cut after being stained, the edges of even the most carefully worked design show small, parallel scratches from the rough wheels used to grind the glass. This is visible on the border of leaves around the image of the Battle Monument.  In contrast, the edges of the cut glass design on the rest of the vase, seen here just above the leaves, have a smooth edge between the red and clear areas.  This indicates that the stain was applied after the glass was cut.

The beautifully worked image of the Baltimore Battle Monument on the front of this vase is a testament to an anonymous Bohemian craftsman’s skill. But his careful, individual work was based on a mass-produced print, on an object intended for a shifting, anonymous, international market, designed to appeal to the citizens of the new city of Baltimore across the ocean. Like James Jefferis’s Liverpool carafe, this piece was fully a product of a world economy. As such, it has more in common with modern customized mementos, like Kristen and Cory’s sunglasses, than appears at first glance.

By Elisabeth Meier, WPAMC Class of 2017

[i] T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004): 61, xii

[ii] Neil Ewins, “Staffordshire Ceramic Trade with North America” (Unpublished Dissertation, 1990): 6-8; Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America (New York: Knopf, 1992): 413; as an example, Peter Kenney, Honore Lannuier, Cabinetmaker from Paris (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998): 107-9; S. Robert Tietelman et al, Success to America (Woodbridge; Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2010): 15, 18, 35.

[iii] Teitelman et al, Success to America, 47