Good morning,



As an enthusiastic lurker of the list, employed in an entirely unrelated field (Marine Biology), I have finally come up with question that warrants me coming out (intentionally) from the shadows.

 

For the last several years I have been studying local, 19th century potteries (i.e., Greenport and Sag Harbor) on the east end of Long Island, New York in an attempt to attribute wares.  I am especially interested in redware.  As you might imagine it is very difficult to tease local production from that of Connecticut, New Jersey and other nearby potteries, but I have had some limited success.  During this quest I have been in contact with at least a couple members of the list who have been extremely gracious and helpful.  Now I have a question that I would like to pose to a larger audience.

 

In trying to understand what I would consider the "contamination" of our local market by wares from other areas I have some basic question regarding 19th century marketing distribution and manufacture.  From what I can piece together, the current consumer/retailer/manufacturer system that we have in place today did not necessarily apply to potters of the 19th century, or if it did, it is was a little more complicated.  I have located at least a couple accounts of a local potter selling/bartering/trading (?) directly to the local populous from the factory and from an oxcart.  Another market appears to have been shipping boat loads of wares for distribution along the CT coast. However, by the second quarter of the 19th century, there were clearly a number of retail establishments selling pottery that could serve local needs.  Newspaper ads of the mid 19th century indicate that everyone carried "earthenware" or "crockery" and in some cases they appear to have had huge amounts of material to unload.  Would local retailers have been more likely to purchase (wholesale?) from nearby potters or would they have relied on out of state potteries from CT and elsewhere to fill their orders/shelves?  Another way to ask this question is were local potters in competition with retailers or did they rely on them to sell what they (the potters) could not sell directly to the public?  Similarly, but less important to my work, what would happen when a pottery laden vessel arrived in CT from Long Island?  Would the wares have been sold to a retailer in large numbers for resale or would the vessel have served as an impromptu retailer serving local residents for a day or two?

 

Based on marked stoneware and what is known about slip decorated redware, there appears to have been a large influx of pottery from Norwalk CT, Stonington CT, Hartford CT, Manhattan NY and Huntington NY to the east end of Long Island.  Most of this probably came via vessels plying the waters of Long Island Sound.  Would these wares from other areas have been more fashionable or more attractive to consumers given their source or were utilitarian wares so far down on the list of valued household possessions that it was simply a question of cost?  Would local potters have responded to this influx by imitating what was popular or would they have tried to establish their own unique"brand identity".

 

I hope that my questions make sense, I am just trying to better understand the market and distribution forces that have resulted in what can be observed in local archaeological, museum and private collections.

 

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. 

 

Chris Pickerell

P.O. Box 1766

Southold, NY 11971

 

(631) 852-8660 Ext. 36