Staffordshire Teapot

Transfer-printing technology was revolutionary to the ceramics industry, and Staffordshire potters made full use of the technique!  The ability to create transfer-printed pottery was first developed in Britain during the 18th century,¹ though transfer-printing had been used long before this in other mediums.  With this technique, potters no longer needed to hand paint objects, and could instead add complex decorations quickly, inexpensively, and uniformly. This greatly aided British potters’ ability to flood the global market.²  It is true that we see no evidence of human error in this teapot’s complex design.  In transfer-printing, an image is engraved on a copper plate, after which the plate is warmed and inked, and the design is printed on a piece of paper through the use of a press.  After, the paper is removed from the plate and placed on the unfired ceramic ware, thereby ‘transferring’ the design. This offered a unique advantage to potters in that the final image appeared exactly as it did on the copper plate, rather than reversed, as it would appear on paper.  Once the paper had been applied to the ware it was rubbed by hand with a soaped flannel until the image adhered to the ware. The ware was then immersed in water to aid in removing the paper. Finally, the potter placed the ware into a kiln at low temperature, in order to fully ‘harden-on’ the color, after which the ware was glazed and fired. ³

Fig. 1-2 A potter transfers his print from paper to ceramic. Women grind color to be used for ink.⁴

Pottery making in the Staffordshire region was a giant industry that involved many hands, and specialized workers. Even a single ceramic ware could change hands multiple times during its creation, with Throwers (or Molders, if it was a molded ceramic), Turners, Handlers, and Engravers all working together to create a piece.⁵ The industry's vast resources in terms of raw materials and skilled craftsmen gave it a global scopefor product dissemination, and with so many hands contributing to the labour, numerous shapes, designs, colors, ware types were produced.  This high level of production also meant Staffordshire potteries could produce goods both quickly and inexpensively, meaning more and more people (even of the Middle and Lower classes) had access to these goods. Staffordshire potters worked  with white refined earthenware, or ‘whiteware;’ in order to create a suitable base for the design, potters were constantly on the hunt for materials to make suitable earthenware bodies, with the desire to produce a perfectly white earthenware.⁶ Meanwhile, cobalt became an essential ingredient as a coloring agent, responsible for producing the blue designs.  This combination of a blue designs on a white base were by far the most popular type during the 19th century, as Europeans attempted to emulate and compete with imported Chinese porcelain. By 1825, other colors became popular as well, including black, pink, green, and light blue.⁷ This teapot utilizes a light blue color for its decoration, also known as ‘flown blue,’ a technical innovation of the 1820s that caused this lighter blue to gain popularity over darker blue shades.  The flown blue technique gave prints a softer, less mechanical quality, as the potters allowed the pigment to run or ‘flow’ slightly during glaze firing.⁸ This soft quality is quite noticeable in the Seneca Village teapot, a characteristic that adds to the peaceful quality of the central scene.

Fig. 2 An overview of a typical Staffordshire pottery factory.9

To learn more about the design and marketing of Staffordshire pottery, click on the teapot’s central design.

Read further about the consumerism of tea wares and Middle Class life, by clicking on the teapot’s rim.

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1 Ann Smart Martin, "Magical, Mythical, Practical, and Sublime: The Meanings and Uses of Ceramics in America," in Ceramics in America, ed. Robert Hunter (Milwaukee, WI.: Chipstone Foundation, 2001), 35.

2 Patricia M. Samford, "Response to a Market: Dating English Underglaze Transfer-Printed Wares," Historical Archaeology 31, no. 2 (1997): 1.

3 Wilfred Laurence Little, Staffordshire Blue: Underglaze Blue Transfer-Printed Earthenware (London: Batsford, 1969), 19.

4 Plate 11-12. From A Representation of the manufacturing of earthenware : with twenty-one highly finished copperplate engravings, and a short explanation of each, shewing the whole process of the pottery. London: Ambrose Cuddon, 1827. Patriotic America. Transferware Collectors Club,Winterthur Museum, and Historic New England. http://www.americanhistoricalstaffordshire.com/industry/representation-manufacturing-earthenware-1827

5 “Account of the Staffordshire Potteries, with a History of theArt, ” Journal of the Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania & American Repertory of Mechanical & Physical Science, Civil Engineering, the Arts & Manufactures & of American & Other Patented Inventions 13, no. 2 (February 1847): 116.

6 Little, Staffordshire Blue: Underglaze Blue Transfer-Printed Earthenware, 19.

7 Ibid. 17.

8 Ibid. 21.

9 Plate 1. From A Representation of the manufacturing of earthenware : with twenty-one highly finished copperplate engravings, and a short explanation of each, shewing the whole process of the pottery. London: Ambrose Cuddon, 1827. Patriotic America. Transferware Collectors Club,Winterthur Museum, and Historic New England. http://www.americanhistoricalstaffordshire.com/industry/representation-manufacturing-earthenware-1827

19th century American consumers had many choices when it came to buying their teaware.  Style, decoration, and design were all chosen carefully and often highly personal or representative of the buyer’s personality.  And with good reason! Teapots were very important to the Middle Class American home, and were the center of an assemblage of specialized objects devoted to tea drinking.  It was during the 19th century that increased industrialization and prosperity lead to the rise of the Middle Class in America, a group of people who had increased commercial freedom, increased leisure time, and time and resources to devote to cultivating their domestic space.  The Middle Class domestic environment often contained specialized spaces, one of these being the parlor, where typical middle class families centered their evening social activities.¹ It was the responsibility of the wife and mother of the family to fill the domestic space with objects that would allow a calm, productive, and harmonious home life to flourish.  Thus her choice of teapot was an important one – it was around this object that the family would gather. Ceramic teapots in particular may have been prided for their beauty and quality of flavor, but also potentially for their firmness and warmth, a cozy quality that may have been valued by middle class families in their attempts to cultivate a family centered space.  Earthenware Staffordshire pottery in particular, such as this teapot from Seneca Village, were not intended for the aristocratic market, but rather for families of the middle and even working class, who could now afford the both decorative and inexpensive ceramics.²

Fig. 1  "The Advantages of Wearing Muslin Dresses!" A cartoon featuring the teapot at the center of the table, and the center of family life.³

Because the teapot was so central to family life and the domestic environment, it was also an object tied closely with womanhood. Prevalent thinking during the period regarded the home as a place of restoration from outside,⁴ and the wife and mother was responsible for maintaining the sacredness of the domestic environment. Her ability to serve tea, and to do so with an elegant teapot, spoke to her aptitude to care for her family and her home.  Tea was primarily taken twice duringthe day in a middle class household. First, in the morning by the family, and secondly in the afternoon, when the woman of the house served non-family guests and friends. This was an important time of day; it provided an opportunity for the lady of the house to show off her refinement and gentility to the other ladies that came to tea, and was an important opportunity for socializing among women.⁵ As well as the inherent power that came with the ability to cultivate and maintain relationships with non-familial women, women also gained power from the sense of specific space that arose with the introduction of a tea drinking culture.  The parlor was heavily gendered toward women, and when tea was served, women controlled the room.⁶ In addition to being an important part of how people, especially women, interacted with the home space, teapots were a part of wider 19th century conceptions of ceramics and their moralizing effects on their users.  Increased consumption of tea was correlated with 19th century temperance movements, and thus tea as a beverage and the materials used to serve it were symbolic of a healthy, devout home. The teapot brought the family together, and as it did so, it helped the family maintain good behaviors, promoting health, structure, and a morally centered environment.⁷ This meant Middle Class women had a big responsibility when choosing a teapot such as this one – she was surrounding her family with highly symbolic objects, representing proper behavior, ethics, and sanctuary from the outside world. In Seneca Village, ceramics such as this one probably filled a similar function, though also may have been experienced differently due to Seneca Villagers’ contrasting experiences from those of their white counterparts.

Fig. 2 "Aesthetic Bridegroom. 'It is quite consummate, is it not?' Intense Bride. 'It is indeed. Oh Algernon, let us live up to it!'"

A young couple purchases a teapot that will help them maintain their proper behavior.⁸

To discover more about the social function of ceramics such as this in Seneca Village, head over to the Teapot as Mediator page!

 To learn more about the design and marketing of Staffordshire pottery, click on the teapot’s central design.

Find out more about the technological process of transfer-printing, by clicking onthe teapot’s spout.

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1 Ellen M. Plante, Women at Home in Victorian America: A Social History, (New York: Facts on File, 1997), 62.

2 Catherine Fennelly,  Something Blue: Some American Views on Staffordshire, (Sturbridge, Mass.: Old Sturbridge Village, 1967), 4-5.

3 James Gilray, “The Advantages of Wearing Muslin Dresses!” Published February 15, 1802, by H. Humphrey, 27 St. James Street, London. (Private Collection). Found in Ann Smart Martin, “Magical, Mythical, Practical, and Sublime: The Meanings and Uses of Ceramics in America,” in Ceramics in America, ed.Robert Hunter, (Milwaukee, WI.: Chipstone Foundation, 2001), 44.

4 Plante, Women at Home in Victorian America: A Social History, 35-36.

5 Diana di Zerega Wall, "Sacred Dinners and Secular Teas: Constructing Domesticity in Mid-19th-Century New York," Historical Archaeology 25, no. 4 (1991): 79.

6 Ann Smart Martin, “Magical, Mythical, Practical, and Sublime: The Meanings and Uses of Ceramics in America,” in Ceramics in America, ed. Robert Hunter (Milwaukee, WI.: Chipstone Foundation, 2001), 43.

7 Ibid. 29-30.

8 George Du Maurier, “The Six-Mark Tea-pot.” Published October 30, 1880, in Punch Magazine. Punch Magazine Cartoon Archive.

Upon first inspection, observers of this teapot will notice its elegance and charisma.  On one side of the teapot’s body, its decoration features a charming landscape that depicts three figures, who stand on the edge of a lake or river where a boat waits on the shore.  Across the lake, a large castle and scattered buildings sit among hills, while an arcaded bridge connects two pieces of land where the river flows between them. Trees, vegetation, and soft clouds give the scene a pastoral and calm quality.  The decoration, delineated in light blue on a white ground, forms a repeating scene, with an identical image also present on the opposite side of the teapot. Ivy-like vine designs on the teapot’s rim and spout, add an appealing touch, unifying the design.  The complexity of this design was made possible through transfer-printing technology, and teapots of this type were by no means uncommon in 19th century America.

Fig.1 A closeup of the Seneca Village Teapot's central decoration.

This teapot was made by Thomas and Joseph Mayer¹ who ran a transfer-printed pottery enterprise originally acquired by Thomas Mayer in 1836.² This is important, as it helps us to place the teapot chronologically; this in turn may give us clues as to the activities of Seneca Village and the teapot’s owners, who could not have purchased the teapot prior to 1836.  Mayer’s firm was based in the Staffordshire region of England, a region so filled with pottery manufacturers that produced the blue and white transfer-printed earthenware, that its name became synonymous with the type of pottery itself.  It was here in the Staffordshire region that the wares were first produced, as early as the 17th century, by which time it comprised the largest group of ceramic producing factories in England.³ However, these ceramics were by no means limited to England – quite the opposite! The Staffordshire pottery industry marketed to their own local consumers, but also carried out a high volume of exporting to the American market, where they found very willing customers.⁴ Americans had a large variety of ceramics to choose from when purchasing.  Even among Staffordshire ceramics, there was a lot of variety for American consumers to choose from.  There were as many as ten categories of Staffordshire transfer-printed decorations, and multiple colors to have decorations printed in, and those decorations often had overlapping characteristics and periods of popularity.⁵ And although Americans often had the choice between American and imported wares, they generally considered English pottery the superior wares to any that were available on the market.⁶ As well, since the Staffordshire potteries had become ubiquitous by the 17th century, they dominated the export industry.  This meant almost all ceramics imported to America were sourced from England.⁷ With this sentiment governing the Americans’ purchasing preferences, and the high levels of exportation on the part of Staffordshire potters, it is not surprising this teapot was found so far from its original production site!

Fig. 2 Plate showing the packing of ceramic wares for export. ⁸

Find out more about the technological process of transfer-printing, by clicking on the teapot’s spout.

To read more about the consumerism of teawares and Middle Class life, click on the teapot’s rim.

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1 Diana di Zerega Wall, Nan A. Rothschild, Meredith B. Linn, and Cynthia R. Copeland, “Seneca Village, a Forgotten Community: Report on the 2011 Excavations,” Institute for the Exploration of Seneca Village History, (Submitted to the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, the Central Park Conservancy, and the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, 2018), 67.

2 Patriotic America, “Thomas Mayer: a very Intelligent Potter,” Transferware Collectors Club, Winterthur Museum, and Historic New England, Accessed December 2019, http://www.americanhistoricalstaffordshire.com/history/thomas-mayer

3 John Flemming, and Hugh Honour, The Penguin Dictionary of Decorative Arts (London: Allen Lane, 1977), 752.

4 Ann Smart Martin, “Magical, Mythical, Practical, and Sublime: The Meanings and Uses of Ceramics in America,” in Ceramics in America, ed. Robert Hunter (Milwaukee, WI.: Chipstone Foundation, 2001), 32-35.

5 Patricia M. Samford, "Response to a Market: Dating English Underglaze Transfer-Printed Wares," Historical Archaeology 31, no. 2 (1997): 17. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25616524.

6  Martin, “Magical, Mythical, Practical, and Sublime: The Meanings and Uses of Ceramics in America,” 32-35.

7 Ibid. 35.

8 Plate 18. From A Representation of the manufacturing of earthenware: with twenty-one highly finished copperplate engravings, and a short explanation of each, shewing the whole process of the pottery. London: Ambrose Cuddon, 1827. Patriotic America. Transferware Collectors Club,Winterthur Museum, and Historic New England. http://www.americanhistoricalstaffordshire.com/industry/representation-manufacturing-earthenware-1827