Rare and Important Redware Sugar Jar with Three-Color Slip Decoration, Alamance County, NC origin, circa 1790-1820, highly-ovoid jar with footed base, vertically-flanged rim, and horizontal strap handles, decorated around the midsection with slip-trailed cross and fleur-de-lis motifs in manganese and cream-colored slip, surrounded by rectangular manganese-slip borders, interspersed with vertical wavy trails of copper slip. Jar is further decorated below with alternating straight and wavy bands of copper and manganese slip, as well as above with geometric motifs girded between bands of copper, manganese, and cream-colored slip. Each handle is finely-decorated with a manganese cross, accented with copper and manganese spots, the terminals additionally decorated with vertical manganese stripes flanking alternating spots of copper and manganese. This extravagantly-decorated jar required over two-hundred individual trails and spots of slip to produce, and ranks among the finest examples of North Carolina slipware to ever come to auction. Its use of a cross and fleur-de-lis design, as discussed by Beckerdite, Brown, and Carnes-McNaughton in their Ceramics in America 2010 article, "Slipware of the St. Asaph's Tradition", is rarely-found on sugar jars from this region, instead more commonly found on early Alamance County dishes as well as later products by Solomon Loy. It is noteworthy for its size, believed to be one of the two largest North Carolina redware sugar jars to be documented, as well as its form, featuring a vertically-flanged rim seen on only two examples from this region, as noted in Beckerdite, Brown, and McNaughton. The jar's visually-arresting decoration, condition, and size define this work as a true masterpiece of its regional style, validated by its inclusion in the prestigious traveling exhibition, Art in Clay: Masterworks of North Carolina Earthenware. Exhibited: Art in Clay: Masterworks of North Carolina Earthenware, displayed at The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Colonial Williamsburg, and Milwaukee Museum of Art, September 2, 2010 to September 1, 2013. Literature: Illustrated in fig. 72, p. 57 of Beckerdite, Brown, and Carnes-McNaughton, "Slipware from the St. Asaph's Tradition", Ceramics in America 2010. Provenance: Christie's, The John Gordon Collection of Folk Americana, Jan. 15, 1999, Lot 298. Crocker Farm, Inc., October 28, 2017, lot 1. Chips (two small ones reglued into place along the rim flange on one side) and wear to rim, light wear to handles, some surface wear to midsection and interior, all typical of slipware pieces of this age and origin. H 10 1/2".
