Lot #: 107
Price Realized: $2,400.00
($2,000 hammer, plus 20% buyer's premium)
PLEASE NOTE: The American ceramics market frequently changes, often dramatically. 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.
Rare Albany-Slip-Glazed Stoneware Temperance Jug, Incised "SLB" and "B- 1885," Simeon L. Bray, Evansville, IN, 1885, narrow-bodied, cylindrical form with flared spout, the surface heavily-incised to resemble tree bark, the handle modeled in the form a sinuous snake pursuing a stylized human face peering upward at the snake from the wall of the vessel. Snake features deeply depressed eye sockets with raised clay eyes and an incised mouth. Incised eyes and mouth to human head below. Surface covered in a reddish-brown Albany slip glaze with yellow-glazed highlights. Shoulder of jug diagonally-incised "SLB" in large letters. Underside incised "B- 1885." The Bray brothers, Simeon, J. Wallace, and William, were all potters raised in Anna and appear as children living there in the 1860 census. The itinerance of the three potter-brothers is evidenced in census and city directories of the period. Simeon, the oldest of the three, is listed in the 1870 census as a "Turner in pottery" working in Anna, where he presumably adopted the temperance jug form in his production at Wallace and Cornwall Kirkpatricks' Anna Pottery. Ten years later, Simeon appears as a potter in Evansville, Indiana, along with his brother, William; William is also shown working in Mound City, Illinois, the same year. Wallace Bray is listed in the 1880 census as a "clay artist" working in Metropolis, Illinois, assumedly at Metropolis Pottery, and in the 1890 Paducah, Kentucky, city directory as a potter. In all, less than ten Bray family temperance jugs have been documented, making them significantly rarer than the Kirkpatrick examples on which they are based. This example is unusually large, the tallest Bray family temperance jug that we have seen. Provenance: Collection of Michael Hall and Pat Glascock, Hamtramck, MI. Excellent, essentially as-made condition with a small in-the-firing chip (contact mark) to side of snake's mouth. H 10".
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