Title: American homes and gardens
Identifier: americanhomesga41907newy (find matches)
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Architecture, Domestic; Landscape gardening
Publisher: New York : Munn and Co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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5—Punch Bowl with Schooner Flying the English Flag the Boston "New's Letter" in 1712, and milliners, apothe- caries, snuff and drygoods shops all kept it. Its use spread slowly as the price was excessive, for in 1721 the price was twenty-five shillings a pound. By 1745 it was thirty-five shillings, but even so the importation was immense, rising in 1763 to a million and a half pounds. By 1771 it had fallen to about three shillings a pound, and with slight fluctuations there the price remained. To contain this precious drink high prices were paid for American one. There is farther decoration, consisting of the pretty httle floral sprigs with which we are familiar. All the pieces in this illustration are typical examples of the style of china which collectors for many years fondly called "Lowestoft," and show the usual forms of coffee, tea, and chocolate or hot-water pots. The earliest specimens of this kind of china had cups without handles, like the one in Fig. 3, and besides those for tea and coffee a certain tall slender cup was brought for custard, sometimes with a cover. The three pieces shown in Figs. 3 and 4 are choice examples of the "sprigged" variety. Only the highest class platters had such a wealth of ornament as is shown in Fig. 4, and it was usual in such pieces that a coat-of-arms should decorate the center. In the extensive collection belonging to the Duke of Cambridge there are no handsomer pieces of festooned pattern, but in- stead of the vase of flowers his are crested. Besides the caddies and the quaint chocolate pots, one of the most desired pieces in this ware was the helmet pitcher. This shape had long been made at some of the famous French potteries, notably those at Rouen, but in many of the French pieces made prior to the year 1700 the lip was masked. The handle was also peculiar, often taking the form of a long, slender, spotted leopard, but the body of the jug was exactly the same as in the so-called Lowestoft, with the spreading top and wide lip. The decoration on the French jugs was the well-known alternating scallop derived from the laces, damasks, marquetrie, and ironwork of the period. It
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6—Blue and Gold Decoration tea services, and an old English letter dated 1740 states, "Tea has now become the darling of our women. Almost every little tradesman's wife will set sipping tea for an hour or more in a morning, and it may be again in the afternoon, if they can get it, and nothing will please them but to sip it out of chinaware, if they can get it. They talk about spend- ing thirty or forty shillings upon a tea equipage as they call it." By far the most interesting piece in Fig. i is the bowl shown at the right of the caddy. It has the American eagle, shield, thunderbolts, "E Pluribus Unum" and all! It seems as if some patriotic old sea captain had ordered it decorated for his own special brew of punch, made potent by "W. I. Rum," as they have it in the old records, and heavy with spices and fragrant with limes. It may have belonged to the great Elias Derby himself, who died in 1805 one of the richest men in New England, and whose ships brought in rolls and crates of china to Salem. On the shield below the stripes you can distinguish a "D." There is another bowl in Fig. 2 and again in Fig. 5, also for punch, and this seems to have been a ship's bowl, or to have belonged to a follower of the sea, for it has on it the picture of a three-masted schooner. It is flying the English flag, so that seems to indicate that it was decorated before 1776. After that date the flag was pretty sure to be an must have been from one of these French jugs that the Celestial potter derived his idea for the well-known "helmet jug. But was it any wonder that such pleasing forms and decorations were popular? When the ware became the col- lector's fad a pretty story, probably originated by Mr. Chafters, went the rounds, and detailed why a rose was so often used in decoration. It was said that one of the chief decorators of this ware at Lowestoft was a French refugee

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