Visions of America: Johnson Brothers pottery in the US market, 1872-2002.

TABLEWARE DESIGNS PRODUCED IN BRITAIN FOR EXPORT TO THE United States were clearly intended to appeal to the American consumer, and their pictorial motifs and pattern names reflect what the British designers understood to be America's history and the national character of its people. For many of these wares produced in the twentieth century, the designers drew upon two major sources of inspiration: a tradition of British export pottery dating back to the early nineteenth century, and their own cultural assumptions based upon aspects of American life that were popularized, and to some extent mythologized, in the British society of the time.

One company in particular, Johnson Brothers, has produced export wares for the United States for 130 years, and was described in 1908 by the Staffordshire The Pottery Gazette as "the largest pottery manufacturers in the world" (The Pottery Gazette 325). Johnson Brothers produced several important "American" patterns, including "Historic America," which was first introduced in 1939 and reissued in 2002. The pattern names, images, and backstamps reflect evidence of how British designers viewed and interpreted American culture.

The production of Staffordshire transferware decorated with American scenes dated back at least as far as the early nineteenth century. According to Edwin Atlee Barber,

 
  The production of Liverpool creamware, with black, brown, green and 
  red printed designs relating to America, extended over a period of 
  some twenty-five years--from about 1790 to 1815. The black printed and 
  lustered creamware and the dark-blue china of the Staffordshire 
  potteries began to take the place of the Liverpool products soon after 
  the War of 1812, and blue printed china continued to be manufactured 
  until about 1830 ... This ware, in turn, was gradually superseded by 
  the Staffordshire crockery, with prints in various colors,--red, 
  green, light blue, black, brown and purple,--which was made in great 
  abundance for at least fifteen years longer, or down to about 1840. 
  (159) 

Barber also stated that William Ridgway had manufactured a dinner service ornamented with American scenery in about 1843 (70). Ridgway owned the Charles Street Works in Hanley, and was a major producer of white granite goods for the American market between 1830 and 1850 (Jewitt 503). The Charles Street pottery was later taken over by J. W. Pankhurst, who sold out to Alfred and Frederick Johnson, and the newly created firm of Johnson Brothers was producing export wares for the United States as early as 1872. (1)

The images on the transferware of the early to mid-nineteenth century were typically scenes of the major cities of the time and based on contemporary engravings. The Capitol in Washington DC was a subject produced by several potteries, including Enoch Wood & Sons, Ralph Stevenson, and William Ridgway (Larsen 300-02); other frequent subjects included scenes of Albany, New York City, and Boston, major population centers at the time. (2) Figure 1 shows "Harvard College," produced by Ralph Stevenson & Williams of Cobridge. Stevenson was active between 1802 and 1840 (Larsen 124), and the plate may have been issued to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the college's founding in 1636. The image is believed to be an imitation of a drawing by Alvin Fisher, engraved by Charles C. Torrey in 1823, entitled "North East View of the Several Halls of Harvard College, Taken from the Craigie Road" (Larsen 126).

According to a study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sales records, the vast majority of British pottery exports to America were of white granite ware, not decorative scenes: "The specialised Staffordshire wares printed with American themes were on the fringe of the trade. Their ubiquity in American Museums is a reflection of already gaining collectable status by the end of the nineteenth century, not their original popularity" (Ewins, "A Picture" 55). Nevertheless, there was a continuous demand for American scenes, as demonstrated by the production of more than 1,100 different views in Wedgwood's "Old Blue Historical" series, made after 1900 for the Boston import firm Jones, McDuffee & Stratton (Stefano 73). (3)