Antique Stoneware Pottery | Antique STRASBURG VA Salt Glaze Stoneware Crock Jar Red & Gold plus Cobalt Swags

Antique STRASBURG VA Salt Glaze Stoneware Crock Jar Red & Gold plus Cobalt Swags

Antique STRASBURG VA Salt Glaze Stoneware Crock Jar Red & Gold plus Cobalt Swags

Up for sale is a truly one of a kind American stoneware straight sided storage jar or crock. If you value the UNIQUE and the WEIRD in your collecting, and want something to really stand out from the normal, well here’s what I’ve been calling the “So Ugly It’s Beautiful Strasburg Jar” ever since I got it! It was thrown on the wheel and very thickly potted in cylindrical form with a thick squarish rim and a deeply incised circumferential line below. It is a dark gray bodied stoneware clay of much poorer quality than normal with lots of grainy gritty impurities… Its surface is covered in a mixed and mottled thick brownish red and, in places, GOLD slip glaze coating. On top of that it’s brushed in seagreen cobalt slip with FOUR groups of horizontal swagged decorations at the rim with scrolled embellishment, as well as an intricate central foliate spray design. This design is large and quite abstract, even if it appeared in crisper detail I’m not sure how it would be described… The jar is a bit over 8.25 tall and 5.25. In diameter across the base. Several factors point to this being a Strasburg piece, a safe attribution anchored by its highly distinctive scroll and swag rim decoration. Beyond that there’s the very bizarre coloration and bumpy surface. In Gene Comstock’s invaluable textbook on Shenandoah Valley pottery, he explains that variable atmospheric and material conditions led to inconsistent kiln firings among Valley potters. Evidently this crock’s bumpy dotted surface and discoloration was a product of uncontrolled firing and formation of gases between the clay body and the still-melding glaze. This was occasionally known to happen at various other Valley potteries but with the scrolled swags it is most likely either a Bell or Eberly piece. The two factories shared production styles and even workers, so it is tough for me to make a final call between the two. Condition is VERY nice. It survives pretty similar to how it left the factory, though it’s surprising, given its strange bloated appearance, that this jar ever left the factory at all. It sustained some surface usage wear but amazingly with no hairlines or cracks anywhere, and just a single pinky fingernail sized chip off the rim. Still, here is a good illustration of how “as made” doesn’t mean “perfect” as there’s numerous “stone pops” or pock marks where the bubbles “burst” open, owing to destabilizing impurities in the clay and the bloating process. All part of its weirdo charm. This item is in the category “Antiques\Primitives”. The seller is “hairkam” and is located in this country: US. This item can be shipped to United States.