Teapot
This teapot represents the entrepreneurial and intrepid spirit of eighteenth-century America. Made at the pottery established by John Bartlam in Cain Hoy, South Carolina, outside of Charleston, it was intended to compete with the popular luxury porcelains with underglaze blue decoration that were produced in England and imported to the colonies. Porcelain required specialized clays, deposits of which had only recently been discovered in the Carolinas, and were being mined and shipped to England from Charleston. Josiah Wedgwood feared that the success of the Cain Hoy enterprise would become serious competition to his stronghold in the American market, writing in a letter to Thomas Bentley in 176 ...
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c. 1765-69
Soft-paste porcelain with underglaze blue decoration
9.0 x 17.5cm
2018.156
Image and text © Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019
Where you'll find this
Permanent collection