Storage jar

This jar is a technical and artistic feat, and one of the finest examples of decorated nineteenth-century stoneware made in the United States. It is arguably the masterwork of the Wilkes Street Pottery, a center of nineteenth-century stoneware production in Alexandra, Virginia, that produced durable wares with applied decoration. Notably, this vessel is attributed to David Jarbour, an African American who purchased his freedom for $300 in 1820 from a well-known Quaker family, and who was employed at the pottery during the tenure of Alexandria glass and ceramics merchant Hugh Smith and his sons. The exuberant and distinctive painted cobalt design of a flower with dense, leafy foliage is strikingly similar to a signed example by Jarbour. The reverse bears a diagonal pattern of three-leaf sprigs covering every inch of the surface and mimicking a textile, a sophisticated yet playful approach to the decoration of a large utilitarian jar.