I'm on the email distribution list of a number of estate sale companies here in Albuquerque, and this week I received an announcement of a sale that included what I perceived to be a large piece of historic North Carolina ash-glazed utilitarian pottery. Eager to have a chance at this jar/churn, I showed up an hour before the start time. Two other people were already in line. However, I knew that neither of them would be interested in an old piece of stoneware. My good fortune.
I was able to lay my hands on the piece almost as quickly as they opened the door for people to flood into the sale. It took perhaps a minute for me to spy the stoneware jar. I picked it up, winced at the price, and then noticed that someone had done some homework on North Carolina stoneware, having printed out several pages of information from the Internet on pottery from the Catawba Valley region of NC. As is often the case with pottery, this piece is unmarked, except for a double-stamped 3. Capacity stamps--the style of the number and the double stamping--can be clues to a maker.
I've done my own homework, having written to a young contemporary potter in NC who thinks the piece likely was made by someone from the line of Reinhardt potters--his family--who started working in the third quarter of the 19th century. My reading of information from a couple of other sites has uncovered several examples of "historic" Reinhardt pieces. I see great similarity between the form of this jar--including the very distinctive mouth and the lug handles occurring on either side of the shoulder, along with the glaze, which consists of crushed iron ore and glass, giving it a dark, hard, glassy sheen.
Sometime soon I will know, with little room for doubt, who produced this beautiful example of pottery from one of the most prolific pottery-making traditions in the United States.
Ahh, the joy of the hunt.
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