“It’s a new record for Manhattan stoneware,” mentioned Mark Zipp of Crocker Farm after his family’s auction company sold a stoneware presentation pitcher with incised Federal eagle decoration, impressed "JOHN, L, WESSELL," on Nov. 19 for $264,000. Incised "New York / September 15th 1806," attributed to the Crolius family, Manhattan, N.Y., 1806, the pitcher came out of an old collection, and the buyer is a private collector.
Ovoid in form, the 11-inch-tall pitcher with footed base and ribbed handle is decorated with an incised and cobalt-highlighted design of a spread-winged federal eagle with patriotic shield, clutching an olive branch and arrows in its talons. The sides of the pitcher are decorated with incised and cobalt-highlighted floral motifs in the Manhattan style, depicting a stylized bud emanating with splayed leaves. On the reverse side is the incised script "New York / September 15th 1806."
Made for local cabinetmaker John Wessells (here "Wessell"), this work features one of the earliest renderings of an eagle in the American stoneware medium, as well as one of a few eagle motifs known from the city of New York. Crafted just 30 years after America's independence, its eagle relates to the original design from the Great Seal of the United States in 1782, depicting the bird with prominent crest, straighter beak, and upward-pointing legs. The pitcher's stylized floral motifs flanking the eagle lead to a firm attribution to a member of the Crolius family of potters, largely responsible for the proliferation of the stoneware industry at the turn of the 19th century. Its combination of impressed and incised lettering is highly unusual, and of particular note are the hand-incised words on the reverse, "New York," making this vessel one of a small number of objects bearing a script inscription linking it to New York City.
A striking combination of numerous excellent qualities, decoration, origin, form, color, condition, and inscriptions specifying both its owner and place and date of manufacture, produce an object of extraordinary significance, beauty, and rarity. Wessell was a cabinetmaker/frame maker in Manhattan.
Its manufacture in Manhattan, the effective birthplace of cobalt-decorated stoneware in America, its use of deftly incised decoration, and its depiction of a classic American image, the federal eagle, make this work the definitive example of the early American stoneware craft.
Photos courtesy of Crocker Farm.