Pitcher

Edwin Bennett was instrumental in the success of the ceramics industry in Baltimore, Maryland. Born and brought up in Derbyshire, he and his brothers learned the pottery trade before emigrating to the United States at different times—Edwin arrived in 1841. The brothers worked in potteries around the country, from Jersey City, New Jersey to East Liverpool, Ohio. By 1846, Edwin relocated to Baltimore, and started his own pottery. His firm produced a variety of wares, all of which were typical of American production during the mid-nineteenth century: cream-colored earthenware, colored stoneware, majolica, and porcelain. Porcelain is the rarest of all the media that the Bennett firm produced. This unusual pitcher is an innovative example of the diverse modes of the Aesthetic movement. It features an unusual honeycomb pattern in low relief over the body of the pitcher, but a fanciful dragon, glazed in brown, forms the handle and the spout.