Pottery & Porcelain

Since the dawn of time, as long as there have been people, there has been…sewage. And for almost as long, we’ve apparently been concerned with it. There is concrete (or clay, at least) evidence of this dating back as far as 4000 B.C.E. Babylon, known for many things – gardens, law, sin…., was also known as the birthplace of pipe, pipe that was formed of clay and baked.

Nearly six thousand years later, we still hadn’t changed pipe all that much. In the 19th century, sewer pipes were still typically fashioned by hand, glazed inside and out with a salt glazing, and then fired to the point of vitrification (when temperature fluctuations break molecular bonds and change the molecular structure). They held up well too, with examples of clay pipes being in active use for 100-150 years!

This type of pipe, sewer pipe, was actually used for a number of applications, including garden furniture and urns, chimney caps, planters, birdhouses and more. The most popular however are perhaps the pieces known as “end of day” objects, things the potters in the tile and pipe factories would hand-model from small amounts of leftover clay at hand as they were wrapping up their work for the day.

These pieces, which reflect the very essence of folk art – defined at least one way as pieces made by untrained artists without profit in mind, are often unique and highly prized by collectors. With the popularity of Staffordshire pottery dogs, seated spaniels molded in sewer tile are very common. Animals in general are very popular with lions, frogs, cats, pigs and squirrels appearing fairly regularly. Most pieces are unsigned, although even those with signatures are usually from unknown artists. The collectible value of sewer tile end of day pieces is influenced, like all pottery, by the condition, but the most significant factors are the originality of the piece and the detail with which it is rendered. More common forms like banks and planters can start at as little as $50, but unique pieces, like the Statue of Liberty pictured here (which, along with the garden furniture link are interesting records because they show what we try to do – linking items that have sold multiple times so you can see the sale history), can bring $4,000 or more. Dogs by George Bagnall, who operated in Newcomerstown, Ohio and is one of the few known sewer tile artists, can also be an exception, fetching several thousand dollars at auction.

Sgraffito derives from graffiare (Italian for “to scratch”) and graphein (Greek for “to write”) and is yet another example of a term that has been slowly adapted (or corrupted, some might say) for use in the American marketplace. Technically and historically speaking, sgraffito is used to describe a method of fresco used on walls (amazing examples still survive on even the exteriors of old buildings throughout Europe) and a means for decorating ceramics. In terms of both fresco wall decoration and ceramics, it means applying multiple layers – plaster for walls, slip for ceramics – and then scratching the upper layer away to reveal the contrasting color.

Perhaps it is the multicolor nature of sgraffito as traditionally performed or simply the incising, scraping away an upper layer of, say, cream to reveal the layer, perhaps red, beneath, that allowed it to become tangled up with the decoration of redware pieces. Redware objects – plates, bowls, chargers, even hollow ware pieces like jars, were frequently decorated with multiple colors of slip and glaze, most commonly cream, yellow, red, and green. The technique in American redware is most frequently associated with the Germanic populations known as Pennsylvania Dutch (more appropriately Pennsylvania Germans and more accurately of the general mid-Atlantic region) and the Moravians who settled in Pennsylvania and the southeastern United States. Both populations used traditional Germanic decorative motifs: birds, tulips, hearts and animals. In this version of sgraffito, designs are incised into “leather-hard” clay, clay that has hardened but can still be worked in limited ways, and then the pieces are fired. While there is an element of “scratching” and the surface often has multiple colors, one layer of color is not removed to expose another, but rather the slip is scratched away to reveal the clay body.

American sgraffito-decorated redware has great appeal among collectors, interesting pottery collectors as well as folk art buyers and is exponentially more popular than European redware. As with all pottery, desirability has to do with form and condition, but sgraffito is, in and of itself, very rare. While sales of large collections like the Shelley collection can skew the perception of availability, in reality, very few pieces appear on the market each year. Meanwhile, however, folks like Lester Breininger offer incredible reproduction pieces!