Dated 1839 American Salt Glaze Stoneware Handled Crock. A remarkable piece of history, these simple stoneware works with modest folk illustrations were made frequently by early settlers. The number 2 is etched into the surface just above the date. 

Size: 10 x 11 in. 

Salt glaze pottery is stoneware with a ceramic glaze of glossy, translucent and slightly orange-peel-like texture which was formed by throwing common salt into the kiln during the higher temperature part of the firing process, where sodium from the salt reacts with silica in the clay body to form a glassy coating of sodium silicate. The earliest known production of salt glazed earthenware was in the Rhineland of Germany around 1400, and by the end of the 15th Century small pottery towns of the Westerwald including Höhr-Grenzhausen, Siegburg, Köln, and Raeren in Flanders were producing a salt-glazed stoneware, with the Bartmann jug a typical product. In the 17th Century salt glaze gained popularity in England as well as in Colonial America and Canada. During the 20th Century, the technique was promoted for studio pottery use by Bernard Leach, and in the 1950s it was introduced into Japanese craft pottery through Leach’s association with Shōji Hamada. Don Reitz introduced salt glazing into the curriculum at Alfred University in New York in 1959, and it subsequently spread to other American universities with ceramic art programs, but beyond the studio movement the process is now effectively obsolete except for a handful of stalwart makers along the Canadian-American border as well as in India, due to concerns of significant amounts of air pollution and toxic health effects resulting from the process. 

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