Rockingham Ware in American Culture, 1830-1930

"Rockingham ware was an inexpensive, brown-glazed ceramic that was ubiquitous in America from the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth century. Popular as an antique today, it is regularly sold at venues ranging from flea markets to antique shows. Despite its prevalence in American life for nearly a century and its continued presence as a collector's item, little has been written on a subject that is of vast interest to collectors, museum curators, historians, and archaeologists." "Jane Perkins Claney has written the first and only full-scale study of Rockingham ware to consider not just its history as a manufactured object but also its role in domestic life. She describes the physical characteristics of Rockingham ware and its production history within the context of nineteenth-century design, shows how certain Rockingham-ware vessels were used in the expression and maintenance of cultural identity and the enactment of social roles, and demonstrates that choices of vessel form and decoration differed according to the gender and social class of the buyer. Rockingham-ware teapots, for example, were favored by working-class women and rarely appeared in middle-class homes, whereas middle-class men living in cities formed the market for Rockingham-ware pitchers decorated with hunting scenes. With the specific cultural roles of Rockingham-ware vessels so clearly understood, the vessels themselves become texts through which to interpret the past." "The book features fifty halftones, fourteen of which also are presented in color, and an extensive archaeological database."--BOOK JACKET.