AMERICAN, POSSIBLY NEW JERSEY YELLOWWARE POTTERY EAGLE PITCHER, clear lead glaze over buff/yellow earthenware body, relief-molded pear-shaped body, central decoration below the spout featuring a well-detailed spread-winged eagle perched on a draped American flag with arrows pointing left and right, and a huge laurel wreath extending around the whole body of the pitcher, with additional large leaf decoration below rim; molded branch-form arched handle entwined with a snake. Unmarked. Maker unverified, probably New Jersey. Circa 1860. 13 1/2" HOA.
Literature: Parallels Frelinghuysen - American Porcelain: 1770-1920; pp. 124-125, cat. no. 30; Barber - The Pottery and Porcelain of the United States, pp. 183-185; Stradling (ed.) - The Jacqueline D. Hodgson Collection of Important American Ceramics, Sotheby Parke Bernet Inc., January 22, 1974, lot 35.
Catalogue Note: Neither the designer nor the manufacturer of this pitcher are known, but a cognate exists in porcelain, examples of which can be found in the collections of the Newark Museum and of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The latter is discussed by Alice C. Frelinghuysen in American Porcelain, published in 1989 to accompany the Met's exhibition of the same name. In discussing the porcelain version, Frelinghuysen states that it is "perhaps the most elegant of all known relief-molded porcelain pitchers made in America at that period [the mid 19th century]". This is high praise, and not unfounded. Incidentally, the present lot is believed to be the very same "yellow earthenware version" mentioned by Frelinghuysen, and her words may well apply in the case of this example too, which was molded every bit as crisply as the porcelain versions. The porcelain versions have been attributed to the American Porcelain Manufacturing Company of Gloucester, New Jersey, which operated between 1854 and 1857. Only a handful of their marked wares are known, all porcelain, which are stamped "APMCo" in various forms. 

In discussing the history of that company, historian Edwin Atlee Barber states that the "Gloucester China Company" incorporated in 1857 as a "continuation" of the previous company. It is possible that either iteration of the company made the present pitcher; in the late 19th century, Barber interviewed a former workman, Phillip Hallworth, who informed him that "experiments were made at one time to produce yellow and Rockingham wares, but after some three kilns had been drawn without success, the attempt was abandoned." However, the incredibly crisp molding and fine glazing of this yellowware pitcher combine to suggest it could not have been the result of a thrice-unsuccessful "experiment". Barber later states that the factory "was closed about 1860, after which, it is stated, some of the operatives started other factories in various parts of New Jersey." With the closing of the factory, it seems quite likely that the unemployed workmen (including the modelers) could indeed have dispersed to nearby potteries in search of work. They would have had many possible destinations to choose from, as sizable factories existed at this time in South Amboy (the Swan Hill Pottery) and in Jersey City (a later incarnation of the American Pottery Company), not to mention multiple capable factories in nearby Trenton, as well as lesser-known factories in Elizabeth and Perth Amboy, and even across the river in Philadelphia.

With this being the only earthenware version of the pitcher known, an attribution to any specific factory would be nothing more than a guess, since a large number of potteries could have acquired the mold from a worker upon the Gloucester factory's closing, and used it to produce the present example. Hopefully a marked example will surface one day; until then, this pitcher stands alone and speaks for itself as a fantastic example of the modeler's art, and a remarkable marriage of classical and patriotic motifs finely rendered on a unique pre-Civil War piece of American pottery.

Undamaged.