Material: Salt Glazed Stoneware and cobalt slip, interior with Albany slip, buff/light
brown body
Condition: Small chip to rim, large chip to inside of one handle, chips & hairlines to
base.
Additional Information: We have found nothing regarding the partnership of Price &
Van Loon, William Ketchum in his book American Stoneware [page 53] states that
Staats Van Loon was an employee of Hastings and Belding from 1851 to 1854; they
went into receivership in 1854 when Van Loon and another employee, George
Washington Boyden bought the company with Guilford still holding one-third share. The
partners [Van Loon & Boyden / Ashfield / Mass] struggled for two years abandoning
their business in 1856. Their pieces are rare. Laura Woodside Watkins wrote in her
Magazine Antiques article, September 1935, Page 96, “After the industry failed, Van
Loon disappeared from Ashfield, perhaps to drift to Bennington or to some other of the
Vermont potteries”.
See New England Potters and Their Wares by Laura Woodside Watkins (Harvard
University Press, 1950) chapter XIII, pp. 108, 109. The Whately Ashfield Group.
Watkins mentions that Staats Van Loon was exceedingly skillful at making offhand
pieces; he first appears in the Ashfield tax list in 1851. It is likely that he migrated from
Pennsylvania or New York State. Watkins notes that all Ashfield pottery chips easily for
various reasons.
This wonderful cooler features a tooled and incised rim and shoulder, applied
handles…the terminuses pick-out in cobalt. The impressed makers mark is brushed in
blue; above the mark in script is “Made By” The front displays three flowers surmounting
undulating sprigging; above the raised bung with four simulated screwheads is a folky
basket of foliage. The back is decorated with an undulating leafy vine running handle-to-
handle. Where the body meets the flaring footed base is found a concentric line of blue
above scalloping. The piece has a powerful presence as is or may be a candidate for
restoration by our restorer or yours.
Condition: Restoration to rim chip and to 5” hairline near base, displays well
Additional Information: Decorated stoneware churn, probably Akron, Ohio, third quarter-19th
century. Ten gallons, slightly ovoid form with a large cobalt bird [Grouse] on a branch. This
churn is one of a group of decorated stoneware displaying a a left-facing bird.
One of that group is a churn incised with the name of potter William
McBurney of Akron and Middlebury. McBurney probably trained at
the Norton pottery and eventually moved to the Akron area in the
1860s. It is not certain whether McBurney made that churn, or all the
left-facing-bird objects. The McBurney churn is illustrated in A History
of Northeast Ohio Stoneware by F. Robert Treichler, page 57.
One of that group is a churn incised with the name of potter William
McBurney of Akron and Middlebury. McBurney probably trained at
the Norton pottery and eventually moved to the Akron area in the
1860s. It is not certain that McBurney made the churn, or the other
left-facing-bird pieces.
The McBurney churn is illustrated in A History of Northeast Ohio
Stoneware by F. Robert Treichler, page 57. A related churn is
illustrated on page 55, and bears the name D.S. Alexander, who was likely a merchant and
agent in Detroit. That jug is also discussed and illustrated in Equal in Goodness: Ohio
Decorative Arts 1788-1860, entry 104. Another Alexander piece (an 1876 Centennial jug) was
appraised by Alan Katz on the Antiques Roadshow in St. Paul, Minnesota, in June 2004. D.S.
Alexander was likely David Alexander, a farm implements dealer and the older brother of noted
businessman, J. Park Alexander (1834-1908). The younger Alexander engaged in a variety of
successful business ventures, however, is perhaps best known for the development of a
stoneware distribution network. He worked with several local potters and maintained
warehouses in Akron, Detroit, and Chicago.
The Alexander churn sold at Garth's, May 2012, lot 74.
PROVENANCE: Ex Collection of Jim Murphy of Grove City, Ohio.
From Garth's 05.15.2015 catalogue: Jim Murphy (1941 to 2012) spent more than three decades
researching Ohio pottery, often publishing his findings in short but highly important articles in
various publications, including the Journal of the American Art Pottery Association, as well as
several self-published pamphlets (some of which, along with his notes were posthumously
published by his friends Jeff Carskadden and Richard Gartley as James L. Murphy's Checklist
of 19th-Century Bluebird Potters and Potteries in Muskingum County, Ohio). His devotion to
collecting was just as passionate, and Jim amassed an encyclopedic collection of Ohio pottery.
Cylindrical 4-gallon jug with tall spout, decorated with a brushed and slip-trailed design
of a large crested bird having fan-shaped tail, perched on a flowering vine. Displays
beautifully, dark, and vibrant greasy blue cobalt. There is a single pint to back and a few
shallow rim flakes, else fine. (Height: 18.25")
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