Guide to Exhibit | Origins of American Stoneware | Wilkes Street Site |
Tildon Easton Site | End of Alexandria's Stoneware Industry
Pottery was manufactured in Alexandria for at least eighty-six years, from 1790 when Captain Henry Piercy first advertised Redware from his kiln on Washington Street, to 1876 when the sons of Benedict C. Milburn finally closed the Wilkes Street Pottery. Partial excavation of the Wilkes Street Pottery site, along with the discovery of fragments of local pottery at archaeological sites throughout the city, have enabled documentation of the development of one of Alexandria's first local industries and a folk art tradition.
American grey and blue stoneware, such as that made in Alexandria, had its roots in the Westerwald region of Germany. Westerwald stoneware was imported to American until the Revolution. The Germanic wares were often decorated with finely incised patterns and molded medallions, and colored with cobalt blue. The later American wares were somewhat simpler and the decoration was painted, freehand, or in some areas, stenciled in blue. The earliest American stonewares were made in Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York in the early 1700's. Although often a cruder product, American ware largely replaced the more expensive English and utilitarian pottery in the late eighteenth century.
The existence of the Wilkes Street Pottery was known from census and tax records, and from advertisements in the Alexandria Gazette, but the actual site was buried underground for one hundred years. Then, in 1977, the land on Wilkes Street (behind Shuman's Bakery) was cleared for the construction of the Tannery Yard condominiums.
During construction, part of a potter's kiln and large piles of damaged stoneware sherds, of "wasters," were discovered. The importance of the site was recognized and professionals from the Virginia Research Center for Archaeology joined together with local volunteers to excavate the site. Construction deadlines allowed only a quick "salvage" excavation, but the site has nevertheless revealed important information about stoneware production in Alexandria. The huge quantities of "wasters" recovered from the site have provided an excellent inventory of the kinds of vessels produced. More important, they have enabled archaeologists to attribute specific stoneware forms and decoration to three separate periods of stoneware production at the Wilkes Street kilns.
The Wilkes Street Potters
The Tildon Easton Kiln Site
Tildon Easton made stoneware for just two short years, from 1841 to 1843. Learn more from an article reprinted from Ceramics in America 2004.
The End of Alexandria's Stoneware Industry
When the Wilkes Street Pottery closed it doors in 1876, the industry's demise was part of a wider nationwide trend. American pottery production was already changing from a folk industry to a factory operation as early as the 1830's. Mass produced pottery made with molds and casts was rapidly replacing that made on the traditional potter's wheel. Yellow Wares and elaborately molded "Rockingham" pitchers provided strong competition for stoneware in the mid-nineteenth century. By 1850 the glass industry was able to produce bottles and jugs at less cost than the Stoneware manufacturers, and Mason jars and tin cans were taking the place of traditional Stoneware crocks. Industrialization rapidly increased after Civil War. The grand display of technological advances at the 1876 Centennial Exhibit helped to lure consumers away from traditional crafts, to almost total reliance on mass-produced goods. Most small potteries in the eastern United States stopped production by 1880. When Benedict C. Milburn's sons sold the Wilkes Street Pottery, the era of traditional Stoneware production was at an end.
Suzita Myer’s book, The Potter’s Art: Salt-Glazed Stoneware of Alexandria, VA., is available for $6.00 from our online museum shop. Several other monographs on Alexandria pottery are also available.
