Antique Majolica Arsenal Shorter & Boulton Nesting Bird Robins Egg Pitcher 8"

Description

Antique Majolica nesting bird / Robins egg pitcher / creamer / jug attributed to Arsenal Pottery after Shorter & Boulton. It features a very colorful motif of Begonia leaves and twigs with a tree branch handle and purple lavender interior. Circa 1880s.

Arsenal Pottery
The Arsenal Pottery was founded in 1876 by Joseph S. Mayer (1846–1907), an English-born-and-trained potter and inventor, as well as a consummate salesman. Initially, the firm produced other types of earthenware, specifically the mottled-brown ware known as Rockingham as well as yellow-bodied ware, or yellowware. By 1882, following the arrival of Mayer’s older brother James (1841–1883), who had a “chemical knowledge of colors” that he applied to the formulation of glazes, the pottery had begun to make majolica.

As a high-volume producer of low-cost wares, Mayer employed a strategy aimed at making majolica accessible to the masses—an approach that made him, at one time, a very wealthy man and an important figure in the ceramic history of Trenton. The plates and jugs that his firm produced are the kinds of decorative wares that adorned the parlors and dining tables of middle- and working-class Americans in the 1880s and 1890s. The plant and animal motifs are suggestive of the nineteenth-century notion that proximity to nature, whether real or manufactured, would make the home a healthy, nurturing environment. Most of these designs were available in a range of color combinations, further expanding Arsenal Pottery’s majolica offerings, which the firm produced well into the 1890s.

Joseph S. Mayer’s motto “everybody wants a jug” reflects the Arsenal Pottery’s commercial strategy to satisfy market demand through the manufacture of low-cost goods at high volume. Many of the firm’s majolica wares were copies of models made by well-known English manufacturers, including its Tea Jug and Marine Jug, which were derived from prototypes introduced by Josiah Wedgwood & Sons and Wardle & Co., respectively.

Arthur Shorter / Boulton
Shorter & Boulton rarely marked their wares. Many Shorter & Boulton designs were heavily copied by other potteries. Arsenal, Eureka and Willits in the United States have had copies of Shorter & Boulton designs attributed to them, and in England, Forester and Fielding are thought to have copied them as well. .

Arthur Shorter was born in 1850, the sixth of seven children. His father Jabez Shorter was a train station master who owned a small interest in a pottery in Longton. After a brief apprenticeship with his father as a railway clerk, his innate artistic talent led Arthur to a career as a ceramics decorator at the firm of Hope & Carter in Burslem. With this experience he became an apprentice at Minton & Co. and later Bodley & Co.

Around 1872 Jabez Shorter set up his two sons, Arthur and William as china dealers in Stanford. The partnership lasted until 1874 when Arthur left the company to partner with Frances Dean, William Lowe and Herbert Machin to form the pottery of Dean, Lowe, Machin & Shorter at the Parker Street Works in Hanley. After two years that partnership dissolved and Shorter established a short partnership with Robert Horne to form Shorter & Horne. That company dissolved in 1878 and the Hanley pottery and its contents were sold.

In 1878 Shorter established yet another partnership, this time with Joseph Bettelley and William Millward. With money derived from the sale of the Hanley pottery, Shorter, Bettelley, Millward & Co. set up business at the small Batavia Works on Copeland Street in Stoke upon Trent. James Boulton—who had experience at Wedgwood—was also part of this firm, working as an experienced oven operator. The partnership was brief as Bettelley and Millward left the company and the partnership was dissolved in November 1878. James Boulton then became Shorter’s new partner and the firm of Shorter & Boulton was founded in late 1878.

During the 1870s, Arthur Shorter married Henrietta Wilkinson. Henrietta was the sister of A.J. Wilkinson who went on to establish his own pottery in Burslem in 1885. This would prove to be greatly influential in the future history of Shorter & Boulton.

The new company of Shorter & Boulton produced a variety of different wares, but majolica was a popular commodity in Victorian England so by 1879 the company entered the majolica market in a big way, soon becoming their main focus. Thanks to Arthur Shorter's brother John–who had immigrated to Australia–the company established a strong export business to Australia, with John handling sales. This export business grew to include other ports within the British Empire as well as the huge ceramics market in the United States where majolica was in high demand. A large export market guaranteed the company’s success where the others had failed.

Condition

Good Overall - wear commensurate with age, crazing, finish wear

Dimensions

6.5" x 5.5" x 7.5" (Width x Depth x Height)