America and the Staffordshire Figure
By Veronica Moriarty

Staffordshire figures of the 19^th century are a remarkable social and historical indicator: ceramic time capsules that both reflect popular taste and recreate it with great verisimilitude. The link between the figurative subject matter selected by the potters of West Staffordshire and "popular culture" has long been established, but what has not been recognized, however, are the remarkable omissions in the potters’ subject matter. One of the most significant is an entire nation: America.

The art of the Staffordshire "portrait" figure reached its peak during the Victorian era and although the subject matter of these figures was wide enough in scope to include animals and buildings as well as humans, it did not reach beyond material of immediately British derivation and, consequent salability. Scratch hard enough at the surface of even the most exotic seeming group and an intensely British connection becomes evident. Figures were not based on whim or random selection for the potters, as much as they were remarkable artists, were also astute businessmen. If it wouldn’t sell, it wasn’t made, and to sell it had to have relevance to the English public.

During the "golden age" of the Staffordshire portrait figure, roughly 1840-1880, there was, despite a thriving local ceramics industry, a strong demand for Staffordshire pottery and porcelain in the "colonies" as the aspirations and tastes of Victoria’s era had immigrated along with her settlers. Stories of settlers nestling a much cherished Staffordshire figure in their belongings for a long and arduous sea journey may be romantic, but the reality of the Staffordshire presence in America was much more mundane and commercial and revealed in ships’ manifests from the period: large quantities of both tablewares and figures were commercially exported from Britain.

The English potters and exporters were well aware of the enthusiasm and lack of discrimination of the American market and sent what they had: figures that reflected English taste and subject matter and to make figures that supported uniquely American subject matter would have appeared ludicrous. Making a figure was expensive — a new figure would have required the services of a modeler (often not employed by small potteries, but itinerants who sold their services as required), then a specialist mould-maker (again not employed by smaller potteries who bought moulds from larger factories, or shared moulds with other small factories) even before a figure was cast. To invest such an amount of time and cost on the production of a figure that would have been of little interest to the English public would have seemed financial suicide.

There was also plenty of local competition facing these imported wares as the commercial production of decorative ceramics in America dated back to 1848 when the pottery of Charles Cartlidge and Co. was established in Greenpoint New York, followed by Christopher Webber Fenton’s United States Pottery Co. in Bennington one year later. Both these potteries produced figural material. After the Civil War the production of ornamental ceramics in America geared up a notch further with the emergence of the Union Porcelain Works in 1863 — in short the American market had a ready supply of locally produced decorative ceramics at increasingly competitive prices to its Staffordshire rivals. The Staffordshire potters knew better than to try and usurp an established local market and kept exporting what they had readily at hand — Anglophile figures that found a market in those not ready to be shaken from traditional taste by the new style of local ornament.

It is wrong to assume, however, that Staffordshire figures were completely divorced from what was happening in America: there is a core group of figures with undeniable American content, but these were potted in small numbers for a domestic sale because of their newsworthiness to the British pottery-purchasing public. Foremost in the select coterie must be George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Some versions of these figures are interchangeable, distinguishable only by the title, with the mold even having been used for a third figure: "Old English Gentleman". One theory for the third title is the unpopularity of the United States in Britain during the 1850s — the potters wanted to sell their figure and re-titling was an easy way to improve salability.

Were these figures created with an American market considered as anything other than a "bonus", the re-titling would never have occurred, as sales would have been assured. Several smaller versions of Franklin and Washington exist, most notably a rare and beautifully modeled one by the "Alpha Factory". A very rare figure tentatively identified as Thomas Jefferson by some scholars, based on its likeness to a portrait, has yet to be confirmed as such, but demonstrates the current eagerness to find "American" figures that has resulted in numerous questionable identifications, including that of a figure, mostly likely a French soldier, being identified as a Confederate private.

Abraham Lincoln was another president to catch the attention of the Staffordshire potters, but like all other presidential portrait figures, examples are remarkably rare. The poorly modeled figure depicts Lincoln on horseback and appears to have been created in a hurry — a substitution of vaguely Lincoln-like features on an existing figure in an attempt to quickly cash-in on Lincoln’s assassination is likely. Why waste time to create a recognizable likeness for a British public unfamiliar with the president’s likeness when a quick, cheap, and vague version will sell just as well — even better if the timing is right.

Slavery drew forth from the potters a righteous array of figures during the 1840s and 1850s including portrait of the abolitionist John Brown and characters from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel "Uncle Tom’s Cabin". These figures were potted for a British market that had already rejected slavery and who was captivated by Stowe’s anti-slavery novel that had been both serialized and dramatized. The American content was incidental — the potters were in "theatrical" mode and bent of depicting players for profit for their British audience, rather than making any political or social statement on slavery in America.

Dianna Vernon, the Cushman sisters, and Adah Isaacs Menken were American actresses who created sensations on the British stage and their inclusion in the Staffordshire figural hall-of-fame is based on that rather than their American antecedents. These figures are well modeled and, if not immediately recognizable from their features, are from their costume and trappings — in the case of Menken being scantily clad and strapped to the back of a stampeding horse in her signature role as Mazeppa!

Isaac van Amburgh, a lion-tamed from Kentucky, performed in Drury Lane and held a private performance for Queen Victoria in 1838 and portrait figures of the performer in his gladiatorial costume are rare. John Solomon Rarey was another American performer who captured the interest of the English public. Rarey, a horse-trainer, gained fame touring England during the 1850s. He too was honored by the Staffordshire potters with a portrait figure of the trainer standing beside "Cruiser", an English thoroughbred stallion notorious for its ferocity and deemed "unbreakable". Through what would be now considered inhumane ends Rarey broke the unfortunate beast’s spirit to great public acclaim.

Acclaim and notoriety were also the motivations for capturing in clay the likeness of another American: Amelia Bloomer. The New Yorker was a champion of women’s rights, being the first woman to edit and publish a newspaper, but what she became infamous was wearing trousers as part of her traveling trousseau while on her honeymoon in 1851. Feminine adoption of this attire, "Bloomerism" as it became known, provoked numerous satirical performances, a song "I want to be a Bloomer", a broadsheet, a polka, and a cult. Numerous figures of Bloomer in full pantalooned glory hit the hungry British market, advancing Amelia’s fight for equal rights for women in ways she never could have imagined.

All these figures are now rare and very expensive and likely never made it to America when they were produced — they were all "spur of the moment" portraits made by the Staffordshire potters to cash-in on the literal "fifteen minutes of fame" enjoyed in England by the American subjects of their portraits whose nationality was incidental to their notoriety.

There are, however, a host of figures with less obvious American associations, but perhaps more valid connections to our ancestors than these "canonical" players. This later group of figures falls, ironically, into two main categories: the theatrical and the religious and temperance.

Theatre has a long history in this country, dating back to 1716 when the first theatre was built in Williamsburg. The plays of Shakespeare were popular with "The Merchant of Venice", "Othello", "Richard the Third", and "Romeo and Juliet" having been staged prior to 1750. Theatrical figures were immensely popular with the British market and they found equal acclaim in America as what was being staged in England was being staged in America. Consequently these figural representations of the players were just as relevant to American consumers as they were for their home market. What is most fascinating about these figures is, however, that they provide a genuine glimpse into the everyday world of 19^th century Americans.

From the earliest days of settlement there has been a section within American society strongly opposed to frivolous entertainments: the Puritans and Quakers, whose beliefs prohibited acting and imbibing in strong drink whose influence helped lead to the emergence of a Temperance movement. The earliest record of the American Temperance movement comes from the Philadelphian Dr. Benjamin Rush in the late 18^th century when he published his "Moral Thermometer", a visual depiction of the dangers of alcoholism — ranging in severity from headaches to spontaneous human combustion! The1830s saw a growing following in the abstinence movement, so it seemed only right when the British temperance groups the "Good Templars" and the "Band of Hope" established themselves in the country in 1859 and 1865 respectively. Staffordshire groups of these temperance organizations are immensely attractive — those of the former depicting their target audience of men and women as young, handsome, and affluent, while those of "The Band of Hope", which was aimed at developing abstinence in children, showed youths happy and healthy and gainfully employed in "spreading the word". Like their theatrical counterparts these figures represented what was important to many 19^th century Americans.

Other religious groups that caught the eye of the Staffordshire potters and who had established an early presence in America included the Order of St Vincent de Paul whose presence in the country predates the America Revolution, the Sisters of Charity whose 1809 founder, Elizabeth Seton, has been beatified by the Catholic Church, and the Salvation Army, established by George Scott Railton in New York in 1880. All these charitable organizations were active in Britain and their works well known to the pottery buying public who may have at one time been recipients of their charity. The acquisition of these figures in more prosperous times often served to display their owner’s gratitude to the organization depicted. American pottery-buyers would have shared similar motivations as their British counterparts in their choice from this particular body of figures.

These clandestine Staffordshire "Americans" should be held in the same esteem and, if there be justice in collecting, sought with the same dedication as their eagerly sought "canonical" compatriots. All these figures deserve recognition not only for their artistry and their age, but also for the contributions they have made to the development of our cultural identity: small ceramic mirrors that reflect back 19^th century life.

"Staffordshire Figures: History in Earthenware 1740 — 1900" by Adele Kenny and Veronica Moriarty, published by Schiffer Publishing, 2004, more fully examines the Staffordshire phenomenon.