The aesthetics of utilitarian domestic red earthenware are what collectors and museums have been drawn to for more than a century now, although, it was likely an important factor in the marketplace even when red earthenware was originally produced in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. In New England, the wares manufactured in southeastern Massachusetts, Bristol County and Cape Cod were unquestionably at the forefront of the visual appeal of the region’s red earthenware production. The wares produced in this part of Massachusetts have it all: form, glaze, skill and refinement, transforming many of these objects into works of art that can be displayed at any art museum in America. This book is the first of its kind to explore this region’s red earthenware production through archaeology, a historical context, as well as the artistry and creativity behind this industry’s production.

Justin W. Thomas is a resident of Newburyport, Massachusetts, and a collector, researcher and writer about American pottery production from the seventeenth through the early-twentieth century. He has studied at archaeology departments, museums and private collections across the country, publishing many articles about American potteries in regional and national publications. Thomas was a guest curator at the Custom House Maritime Museum in Newburyport, assembling a temporary exhibit of locally made pottery from the Colonial period through the early-twentieth century. He also helped to write the exhibit catalog, Potters on the Merrimac: A Century of New England Ceramics.

He is also the author of The Beverly Pottery: The Wares of Charles A. Lawrence, The Moses B. Paige Company: The Last of the Peabody Potteries, The Dawn of Independence, the Death of an Industry: The Pottery of Charlestown, Massachusetts and South Amesbury’s Red Earthenware & Stoneware: The 1791-1820 William Pecker Pottery, all available from Historic Beverly.