It was pot-washing day here
Below, some random ceramic sherds:
This piece has a maker's mark of the East Trenton Pottery Company in Trenton, New Jersey, and would have been made in the late 1880s.
The following pieces don't have maker's marks, but they sure are pretty. We found quite a few (very small) pieces of that reddish-brown patterned pottery.
Lastly, one of my favorite artifacts, the teapot, which now consists of nine pieces. Laurie thinks it may be a Brown Betty and I'm inclined to agree. It's a very no-nonsense item, solid and undecorated, but really beautiful. The glaze has a lovely range of hues in it.
Ah, we have a Brown Betty brewing chamomile tea at this very moment. Ours from Toast from a few years back. I guess the Brown Betty must be the world's all-time favourite teapot. Yours looks rather more charming and has a more interesting glaze than ours though.
ReplyDeleteI did four years of ceramics in high school. My new dream is to make a precise reproduction of our teapot, but I don't know what I'd use to get the wonderful glaze. I suppose to do it correctly I'd have to obtain historically accurate clay and glaze.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard not to like the Brown Betty. It's the hand pestle of teapots.
My favourite is the Berber carpet, especially the one arranged diagonally so that it appears to move from left to right when you scroll down the page. Very clever.
ReplyDeleteOnly kidding.
I do think you need a matchbox, though, for scale. The bottle was bigger than I thought when seen in close proximity to the (obviously hallowed) remains of Big Betty.
Good work, Ms M. Your diligence continues to impress.
Betty is actually quite Big. I should pose it again with the mouth pieced together - we actually have all of the pieces. The opening is 3.75". The spout is 6", and the height of the entire teapot probably was about 7.5". From BB's I've looked at online, I believe this would mean that our Betty would have held 8 cups.
ReplyDeleteI assumed Betty would be quite Big from the size of the spout relative to your hand. The pot would have to be taller than the spout or else more tea would go into people's laps than into the cups.
ReplyDeleteIf you decide to go back to Oxford, come up this way some time and I'll take you to the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, where they allegedly have the second biggest ceramics collection in the world. They also have some Anglo-Saxon bits and a real Spitfire!