Redware as a single word is a term for at least two types of pottery of the last few centuries, in Europe and North America. Red ware as two words is a term used for pottery, mostly by archaeologists, found in a very wide range of places. However, these distinct usages are not always adhered to, especially when referring to the many different types of pre-colonial red wares in the Americas, which may be called "redware".
In the great majority of cases the "red" concerned is the natural reddish-brown of the fired
clay, and the same sort of colour as in
terracotta (which most types of red ware could also be called) or red brick. The colour to which clay turns when fired varies considerably with its geological makeup and the conditions of firing, and as well as terracotta red, covers a wide range of blacks, browns, greys, whites and yellows.
Of the two "redware" types, both made between the 17th to 19th centuries (with modern revivals or imitations), the European was unglazed
stoneware, mostly for teapots, jugs and mugs, and moderately, sometimes very, expensive. The American redware was cheap earthenware, very often with a
ceramic glaze
Ceramic glaze is an impervious layer or coating of a vitreous substance which has been fused to a pottery body through firing. Glaze can serve to color, decorate or waterproof an item. Glazing renders earthenware vessels suitable for holding ...
, used for a wide variety of kitchen and dining functions, as well as objects such as
chamberpot
A chamber pot is a portable toilet, meant for nocturnal use in the bedroom. It was common in many cultures before the advent of indoor plumbing and flushing toilets.
Names and etymology
"Chamber" is an older term for bedroom. The chamber pot ...
s.
Redware
European
In European contexts "redware" usually means an unglazed ("dry-bodied")
stoneware, typically used for serving or drinking drinks. The term is especially used for pottery from the 17th and 18th centuries, before
porcelain, whether imported from East Asia or made in Europe, became cheap enough to be used very widely. In this period red stoneware was used for vessels, especially teapots, jugs and mugs, which were relatively expensive and carefully made and decorated. Imported examples of Chinese
Yixing clay teapots, an unglazed stoneware type made from a special type of clay, provided the exemplars and were often copied with various degrees of closeness. Soon a European design vocabulary was used as well.
A
Delftware manufacturer announced in 1678 that he was making "red teapots", of which no examples are known to survive. The Dutch
Elers brothers
John Philip Elers (7 September 1664 – 1738) and his brother David Elers were Dutch silversmiths who came to England in the 1680s and turned into potters. The Elers brothers were important innovators in English pottery, bringing redware or ungla ...
brought the style to
Staffordshire pottery in the 1690s, after finding a suitable source of clay, and were widely imitated there. Some red stoneware by rival Dutch potters including
Arij de Milde from the years around 1700 does survive, closely copying Yixing pots in style.
Johann Friedrich Böttger
Johann Friedrich Böttger (also Böttcher or Böttiger; 4 February 1682 – 13 March 1719) was a German alchemist. Böttger was born in Schleiz and died in Dresden. He is normally credited with being the first European to discover the secret of th ...
was in contact with some of these and developed a rival "Böttger ware", a dark red stoneware first sold in 1710, and manufactured and imitated by others, all up to about 1740. It was Böttger's first commercial ware and a significant stage in his development of porcelain in Europe, which he was soon making at the
Meissen porcelain factory.
Josiah Wedgwood later refined the type, and gave the decoration a fashionable turn towards
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism (also spelled Neo-classicism) was a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism was ...
, with his "Rosso Antico" body. This was usually decorated with
sprigged reliefs in black, creating pleasing contrasts like those in his earlier
Jasperware.
American
![Redware Slip-decorated dish MET DP335286](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Redware_Slip-decorated_dish_MET_DP335286.jpg)
In American contexts "redware" usually means
earthenware
Earthenware is glazed or unglazed nonvitreous pottery that has normally been fired below . Basic earthenware, often called terracotta, absorbs liquids such as water. However, earthenware can be made impervious to liquids by coating it with a ce ...
with a reddish body, whether glazed or not. In fact it was very often given a white or other glaze, either
tin-glazed
Tin-glazing is the process of giving tin-glazed pottery items a ceramic glaze that is white, glossy and opaque, which is normally applied to red or buff earthenware. Tin-glaze is plain lead glaze with a small amount of tin oxide added.Caiger-Smith, ...
or
lead-glazed
Lead-glazed earthenware is one of the traditional types of earthenware with a ceramic glaze, which coats the ceramic biscuit body and renders it impervious to liquids, as terracotta itself is not. Plain lead glaze is shiny and transparent after f ...
, though it is more usual to describe them as lead-glazed. Depending on the locality, this was the basic utilitarian pottery of the Colonial period of North America. It was often complemented by imported or
American stoneware for large vessels where the added strength was useful. The name distinguishes the type from various other earthenwares with white, grey or yellow colours to the fired body, depending on the particular clay used. Some redware was imported from England. Later, American stoneware in particular, and various types of modern wares, including porcelain, took over for many types of objects.
[Groover, 231-233; Turnbaugh]
Major museum collections concentrate on the larger dishes, platters and jugs that are glazed, often in yellowish tones, and painted with bold
folk art designs, even well into the 19th century. But these special decorated pieces are rather untypical of the mass of
sherd
In archaeology, a sherd, or more precisely, potsherd, is commonly a historic or prehistoric fragment of pottery, although the term is occasionally used to refer to fragments of stone and glass vessels, as well.
Occasionally, a piece of broken p ...
s found by archaeologists excavating sites of the period. Many of these fancy pieces are dated, signed or marked with a stamp.
File:Tea Canister MET DP207182 (cropped).jpg, Tea caddy, with "Sally Smith 1769" in the painting. Bucks County, Wrightstown, Pennsylvania
File:Plate MET DP207701 (cropped).jpg, Dish with sgraffito decoration, inscribed "1793 HR", perhaps for Heinrich Roth, a potter then active in Northampton County, Pennsylvania
Northampton County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 312,951. Its county seat is Easton. The county was formed in 1752 from parts of Bucks County. Its namesake was Northamptonshire, En ...
.
File:Redware Water Jar (cropped).jpg, Utilitarian glazed water jar
File:Dish MET DP207768 (cropped).jpg, Platter, 1790s, slip decoration, Norwalk, Connecticut
, image_map = Fairfield County Connecticut incorporated and unincorporated areas Norwalk highlighted.svg
, mapsize = 230px
, map_caption = Location in Fairfield County, Connecticut, Fairfield County and ...
Red ware
"Red ware" is widely used in archaeology to distinguish local types of red pottery from types with other colours found in the same region. Generally these are unglazed earthenware where the red colour is easily visible in complete pieces. Examples of types include:
Red Polished Ware Red Polished Ware may refer to several types of ancient pottery with a red or terracotta-coloured body:
*El-Badari, Egypt c. 5500-4000 BC
*Philia culture, Cyprus c. 2000 BC
*Pottery of ancient Cyprus, Cyprus c. 2000 BC
* Red Polished Ware (Gujarat) ...
, of which there are four main unrelated types, all ancient, from Egypt, India, Cyprus and Roman Europe; the
Black and red ware culture of Bronze Age India (individual objects are either black or red); Roman "red gloss ware" or
Terra sigillata
Terra sigillata is a term with at least three distinct meanings: as a description of medieval medicinal earth; in archaeology, as a general term for some of the fine red Ancient Roman pottery with glossy surface slips made in specific areas of t ...
; Late Roman
African red slip ware
African red slip ware, also African Red Slip or ARS, is a category of ''terra sigillata'', or "fine" Ancient Roman pottery produced from the mid-1st century AD into the 7th century in the province of Africa Proconsularis, specifically that part r ...
; Salado or
Roosevelt Red Ware
Roosevelt Red Ware, also known as Salado Red Ware and Salado Polychrome, is a late prehistoric pottery tradition found across large portions of Arizona and New Mexico. The tradition involves the combination of red, white, and black paint in varyin ...
, Arizona, c. 1280 to 1450 AD, and one form of Romano-British
Crambeck Ware
Crambeck Ware is a type of Romano-British ceramic produced in North Yorkshire primarily in the 4th Century AD.Monaghan, G. 1997.''Roman Pottery from York'' (Archaeology of York Series 16/8). York: York Archaeological Trust. pp903-906
Site
The C ...
.
File:Red polished ware jar MET 36.1.16.jpg, Egyptian "red polished ware" jar, circa 3650 –3300 BC, Predynastic, Naqada II
The Gerzeh culture, also called Naqada II, refers to the archaeological stage at Gerzeh (also Girza or Jirzah), a prehistoric Egyptian cemetery located along the west bank of the Nile. The necropolis is named after el-Girzeh, the nearby contem ...
File:Red Ware Situla-shaped Jar from Malqata MET 11.215.481-82.jpg, Egyptian "red ware" situla-shaped jar, c 1390–1353 BC, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reign of Amenhotep III
Amenhotep III ( egy, jmn-ḥtp(.w), ''Amānəḥūtpū'' , "Amun is Satisfied"; Hellenized as Amenophis III), also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent or Amenhotep the Great, was the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. According to different ...
File:Stand MET SF9618124b.jpg, Etruscan red ware stand, 700–650 BC
File:Roman pottery African Red Slip.jpg, African red slip ware
African red slip ware, also African Red Slip or ARS, is a category of ''terra sigillata'', or "fine" Ancient Roman pottery produced from the mid-1st century AD into the 7th century in the province of Africa Proconsularis, specifically that part r ...
, made in Tunisia, AD 350-400
Notes
References
*Groover, Mark D., ''An Archaeological Study of Rural Capitalism and Material Life: The Gibbs Farmstead in Southern Appalachia, 1790-1920'', 2006, Springer Science & Business Media, , 9780306479175
google books*Osborne, Harold (ed), ''The Oxford Companion to the Decorative Arts'', 1975, OUP,
*Turnbaugh, Sarah Peabody, "17th and 18th Century Lead-Glazed Redwares in the Massachusetts Bay Colony", in ''Images of the Recent Past: Readings in Historical Archaeology'', ed. Charles E. Orser, 1996, Rowman Altamira, {{ISBN, 0761991425, 9780761991427
google books
Stoneware
American pottery