Lot #: 171
Price Realized: $501.50
($425 hammer, plus 18% buyer's premium)
PLEASE NOTE: This result is 6 years old, and the American ceramics market frequently changes. Additionally, small nuances of color, condition, shape, etc. can mean huge differences in price. If you're interested in having us sell a similar item for you, please contact us here.
Extremely Rare Three-Gallon Stoneware Jar with Cobalt Floral Decoration, Inscribed "Masontown", Fayette County, PA or Preston County, WV, second quarter 19th century, ovoid jar with flattened rim and crude lug handles, decorated on each side with three tulips emanating from a central stem. Inscribed on the front in cobalt, "Masontown", below an ornate impressed three-gallon capacity mark. Brushed cobalt highlights to handle terminals. This jar is the only example of stoneware we have seen bearing a "Masontown" inscription, and it probably refers to the Masontown of Fayette County, PA, where John Debolt established a pottery in the 1820s. It is unclear if stoneware was ever produced at Debolt's Masontown shop, but his son, George, would go on to establish the first viable stoneware pottery in New Geneva in 1849. C. Gerald Debolt's "Debolts in America: The Debolts of Fayette and Greene Counties, Pennsylvania," states that, "With the death of [his first wife] in childbirth in 1824 John [Debolt] moved to Masontown, Pa. ... . Here he worked at the pottery trade until 1835 when he built a steam powered sawmill on the Monongahela River near Masontown." George Debolt would work with the Boughners in Greensboro before his time in New Geneva and, ultimately, a career as a journeyman stoneware potter. It seems likely that this jar somehow relates to the Debolt's activities in Masontown; if not made by the Debolt family, then it probably represents some other early Fayette County product made before the middle of the nineteenth century. Of note, however, is the jar's unusual decoration and handle construction, atypical of known Fayette County examples. This could be easily explained by its relatively early date; nevertheless, the possibility exists that this jar was not made in Masontown, Pennsylvania, but is instead a product of the small town of Masontown, West Virginia, located in Preston County, thirteen miles south of Morgantown. None of our research, however, could established the existence of a pottery there. Provenance: From an over forty-year private collection. A smooth, in-the-firing contact mark along one handle. Opposite handle with an in-the-firing chip to one terminal and some additional chipping to opposite terminal. A thin, in-the-firing contact mark to rim. A few shallow base chips. A faint 2 1/2" surface line at base, not visible on interior. Two minor chips to interior of rim and a minor in-the-firing ping to exterior of rim.
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