Utilitarian Redware in Massachusetts

The Chase family pottery

Justin Thomas

ames Chase was the first of three

generations
of
Chases
who
produced redware on the banks
of the Merrimac River in
Massachusetts. But the Chase
family business did not actually
begin with James; James learned
his trade in the shop of his uncle,
William Pecker.
William Pecker was the earliest
and probably the best known of the
potters in Merrimacport, Mass. His
death in 1820 was completely unexpected,
when his kiln collapsed on top of him and
crushed him to death. It was a tragic event
that cut short the life of a potter who had
a lot left to offer his family and many more
accomplishments to achieve in the American
utilitarian pottery industry (see NEAJ, October,
2013, for an account of his life and work).
Peckers talent was equal to all the best seventeenth,
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century New England
utilitarian potters. Pecker was his own industry, but he was
a member of an active community of potters in southeastern
Massachusetts and Essex County who influenced each
other through glaze, decoration and form. The
larger, more urban potters of the North and
South Shores were able to experiment
with finer glazes that Pecker may not
have had access to. Pecker was merely
a country potter. He did not have the
export system that many of the established
potteries depended on for their success, so he
peddled his pots to nearby Newburyport and
Haverhill. Pecker probably also sold to parts
of New Hampshire. He may have occasionally
contracted with a merchant, but nowhere
nearly to the extent that larger potteries did.
Fortunately, Peckers craft did not fade away
with his death, and he had a successful
pottery to bequeath.

The Chase family pottery

James Chase, a nephew of Pecker, had
been training under him for a number of
years and had learned all of Peckers secrets in
the potters trade. He saw how Pecker ran the
pottery business; he witnessed Peckers secrets
on the wheel; he knew his glaze recipes; and he
probably even understood Peckers wonderful eye
for proportion within a perfectly balanced form.
James Chase may have begun his career as a potter
in the eighteenth century. He was born in 1779 to
Peckers sister, Hannah, who had married Edmund Chase.
James Chase likely began training under Pecker in the 1790s,

Page 34 Antiques Journal October 2014

when Pecker went into business on his own.

He immediately took over the Merrimacport
business upon Peckers death. The business
model of local sales probably remained the
same.
Lura Woodside Watkins conducted a study
of the Chase Pottery for her 1950 book,
Early New England Potters and Their Wares.
According to Watkins, James Chase married
Olive Lucas from Charlestown. She says the
couple met when he was living in Andover.
We do not know for sure why he was in
Andover, but my suspicions suggest he
was attempting to set up his own business
there. However, according to Watkins, the
couple moved back to
James Chase
Merrimacport in 1816 and
attributed
Chase had been employed
redware herb pot,
by Pecker since then.
1820-1860. Lura
James Chase owned
Woodside Watkins
a house next door to
Collection. Courtesy
Peckers, and on Peckers
The Smithsonian,
death, the kiln was moved
Washington, D.C.
to his property. Chase
continued to run the
business in the same way as his mentor. It appears
Chase was very successful. He had the financial
means to provide a home for his daughter,
Olive, and his son, Phineas. Phineas
also went into the pottery business.
In the latter years of the 1830s
and into the 1840s, Phineas
Chase worked alongside his
dad, similar to how James
Chase and Pecker did many
years before. James Chase
died in 1849. Phineas Chase
became a third generation
potter, when he took over the
business upon his fathers death
and moved it to his own house. He
continued in business until his death
in 1863.
Then another member of the family,
Richard Chase took it over. But the Industrial
Revolution was too much for the pottery
to survive, and the family was
Chase
unwilling to put more money into
Pottery
it to keep it going. So the Chase
Redware
pottery closed its doors just a few
pitcher, 1820years after Richard had taken it
1860. Lura
over. Three generations of Chases
Woodside Watkins
had owned the Merrimacport
Collection. Courtesy
pottery, the most successful of
The Smithsonian,
whom was James Chase.
Washington, D.C.

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A footnote to the Chase pottery is appropriate

here. According to Watkins, a form of household
decorative pottery was made in Merrimacport in
the 1870s and 1880s. She described it as a brica-brac product. While not a lot of information
is known about this operation, it was likely
still under the direction of the Chase family.
A reddish-gold painted red earthenware bottle
recently emerged in the greater-Newburyport
area, which is likely related to this business. It
is very thinly potted with a top and foot that
is very similar to characteristics Pecker would
have used on his jugs and pots before 1820.

Forms and glazes

In Early New England Potters and Their

Wares, Watkins mainly covers interior-glazed,
utilitarian forms made at the Chase Pottery;
however, she did donate a group of boldly
glazed forms made in Merrimacport as part of
her collection to the Smithsonian in Washington,
D.C. All the forms she attributes to James Chase
were found in and around the Merrimacport
area some of the forms at the Smithsonian
were probably discovered after her book was
published in was published in 1950.
The Chase Pottery made a huge variety of
forms including jugs, bowls, pans, mugs, stew
pots, herb pots, pitchers, crocks, bean pots,
pudding pots, pudding dishes, muffin cups,
lidded jars and additional kitchen utensils.
Known glazes ranged from orange, dark red,
dark green, lime green, yellow and brown
and tan. Brown, tan and black freckling was
sometimes seen on the more colorful glazes.
The Chase pottery used both local clays
and clays imported from New Hampshire. The
clays were not always pure with the result that
some wares exhibited peach or light colored
halos caused by iron in the clay reacting to the

heat of the kiln. Other pots showed a heavy

concentration of green dots probably
caused by copper in the clay.
William Pecker is best
known today for his pumpkin
orange base glazes with
swipes of brown or with black
manganese decoration over
the glaze. It does not appear
the Chase Pottery ever used this
technique. Anytime manganese
was used, it appears to have been
dripped or splattered onto the vessel. This
technique was most common by the potters
who worked a few miles to the south in South
Danvers (now part of Peabody), Mass. The
reason is not clear why the Chase Pottery never
again applied Peckers traditional glaze after his
death, but it is possible that his nephew and
grandson wanted to leave it unique to him as a
form of homage.
Chase Pottery utilitarian forms were
sometimes very similar to Peckers, but in most
instances the forms evolved. For example, many
of Peckers forms showed a sharply cut off
base (commonly seen in eighteenthcentury Essex County pottery), while
the Chase family often gave their
pots a rounded foot at the base.
Pecker made some stoneware as
well as redware in the eighteenth
century, but he probably found it
too expensive to import stoneware
clay, so he produced mainly redware
in the nineteenth century. There
was very little stoneware produced in
Merrimacport in the 1800s, so the Chase
Pottery probably never made stoneware,
even though James would have witnessed
Peckers stoneware techniques.

Chase Pottery Redware stew pot (left) 1820-1860 with a traditional Pecker Pottery stew pot
(right) 1790-1820. Courtesy the author.

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James Chase attributed redware handled

bowl or cup, 1820-1860. Lura Woodside
Watkins Collection. Courtesy The
Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.

James Chase attributed redware pudding

pan, 1820-1860. Lura Woodside Watkins
Collection. Courtesy The Smithsonian,
Washington, D.C.

Chase Pottery redware mug, 1820-1860 with

similar glaze to the handled mug or bowl in
the Smithsonian. Courtesy Samuel Herrup.

October 2014 Antiques Journal Page 35

William Pecker often applied

between one and four incised lines
around the top half of his wares and
James and Phineas Chase continued
this technique. The handles of jugs
and pitchers were usually attached
to the lip of the ware in the Pecker
manner. It was very rare for the
handle to be looped back around to
where it was attached at the body in
redware made by either Pecker or the
Chases. There are a few examples of
this technique, but it was not common
in Merrimacport pottery.

A glaze and a sherd

Chase Pottery redware lidded herb pot 1820-1860 (left) of a form
similar to the herb pot in the Smithsonian. Traditional Pecker Pottery
herb pot 1790-1820 (right) - Ex-Nolan Collection. Courtesy the author.

Watkins tells of her interview

with an elderly potter who had
worked at the Chase pottery
around 1864: John Donovan was
an accomplished itinerant potter,
and one of his most interesting
recollections of the Chase pottery
was of an unusual green glaze that
was unlike any in Essex County.
I discovered a green glazed sherd
on the shores of the Merrimack
River in Newburyport not too long
ago. I immediately thought it may
have been the green glaze Watkins
referred to since the sherd was
found less than ten miles away
from where the Chase Pottery once
operated. There are no other known

potters who worked in the area that

applied a green in this manner. The
green reminded me of the colors
seen on pine trees. The sherd was
only glazed on the exterior. I believe
it was from the Chase pottery: It
was definitely from the nineteenth
century and probably locally made.
The Chase Pottery also applied
a lime green glaze, similar to that
seen at the Daniel Bayley Pottery
in Newburyport in the eighteenth
century. There is the possibility that
this was the green glaze Donovan
referred to, not the green on the
sherd I had found.
Nineteenth-century
maps
show that there were three kilns
in Merrimacport, each abutting
the others on adjacent properties
on the Merrimack River and each
representing a separate generation
of Merrimacport redware. Today,
the potteries of Merrimacport are
an evolving study as new forms
and ideas come forward. The Chase
family has been relatively and
unjustly neglected by researchers,
but their contributions to the
New England utilitarian pottery
movement have earned them a
place alongside the better known
redware potters who worked after
1820 in New England.

Probably Chase Pottery redware bowl, of a form similar to an example

in the Lura Woodside Watkins Collection. Also three small redware
cups, with glazes similar to Chase Pottery and Pecker glazes, all found
in the Newburyport area, c. 1820-1860. Courtesy the author.

Helen Howard
~ Painter ~

Visit my website at www.helenhoward.net

email: hhowardartist@gmail.com
Unusual green redware sherd found on the Merrimack River in
Newburyport probably from a local 19th-century potter: Possibly
the green glaze made at the Chase Pottery described by Watkins.
Courtesy the author.

Page 36 Antiques Journal October 2014

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