English Creamware Jug with "Success to the Crooked but interesting Town of Boston" Inscription, Reference to Boston, MA

English Creamware Jug with "Success to the Crooked but interesting Town of Boston" Inscription,
Reference to Boston, MA,
Probably Liverpool,
1800

The English creamware jug in red has the inscription referring to Boston, MA on one side within a wreath and on the reverse twenty-one lines of red transfer printed verse, by Thomas Moore, also within a wreath.  The top and bottom of the jug with a narrow red band and with an applied handle with small spot of red enamel at the top.  The inscription is a reference to the winding streets of Boston.

Dimensions: 6 1/2 inches high x 7 inches wide x 5 inches

Provenance: Warren M. Little Collection, one of the sons of the famous Americana Collector Nina Little.

Sold in Fall 1991 for $5,500.00.  A clipping from the Maine Antique Digest, January 1992 found inside jug with comment "One of the rare original ones".

The poem on the reverse is a variation of Poems of Home: V. The Home,“I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled” written in 1799, by Thomas Moore (1779–1852)

I Knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled    
  Above the green elms, that a cottage was near,    
And I said, “If there ’s peace to be found in the world,    
  A heart that is humble might hope for it here!”

Every leaf was at rest, and I heard not a sound,
But the woodpecker tapping the hollow beech-tree.

And “Here in this lone little wood,” I exclaimed,
“With a maid who was lovely to soul and to eye,
 Who would blush when I praised her,
and weep if I blamed,
How blest could I live, and how calm could I die!

Every leaf was at rest etc.

Reference:

See "Anglo-American Ceramics, Part I", Transfer Printed Creamware and Pearlware for the American Market, 1760-1860, David & Linda Arman, Page 180,    S74, for a more common black printed example- called "Extremely rare".

From the Massachusetts Historical Society who have a similar example
(https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=2509&pid=33)

While modern readers can be forgiven for assuming the motto refers to her politicians, it actually refers to Boston’s streets, notoriously winding and difficult as the 1664 report by the Royal Commissioners attested: “Their houses are generally wooden, their streets crooked with little decency and no uniformity” (quoted in Caleb H Snow's A History of Boston, 1828).

Also see the example in black at the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts.

(Ref: NY10026-imrr)

Dimensions

This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance

Condition report

Stock number