ANTIQUES: Decorative Stoneware

 

A distinctive, deep, tuba-like toot can be produced by someone with strong lungs, a big jug, and a love for 1920s jug-band music, but today, it makes more sense to use this antique crockery for decorative purposes. Originally, heavy stoneware jugs, crocks, and pitchers were utilitarian, for storing cider, molasses, pickles, and other goods in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Now, the glossy ceramicware is highly collectible.

 

Considered folk art, the quality of the motif—flowers and birds are among the most popular designs—determines the value and desirability of each piece. The overall color is often gray or tan, because of impurities in the clay; a cobalt blue motif ranges from almost black to a lighter indigo shade, depending upon the thickness and quality of the glaze. Of these three examples pictured above, the jug with the lovebirds ($2,600, top right) is stamped West Troy; the second jug with a bird motif ($1,600, left) was manufactured in Utica, New York; and the crock ($1,800, right) was made in Worcester, Massachusetts. 

 

For anyone not of a musical bent, one of these distinctive stoneware vessels works just as well as a lovely reminder of simpler days gone by. [JULY 2009]

 

THE GOODS

 

Charles L. Flint Antiques

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Lenox, Mass.

www.flint.cc