On February 16, 1827, Benjamin Tucker wrote to Isaac and Hannah Jones thanking them for caring for his sick daughter and presenting them with a “... specimen of American China, manufactured by my son William Ellis.” In a postscript he notes, “N.B. These pitchers are from his first kiln of china ware.” The return letter from Mr. and Mrs. Jones describes “two elegantly white Pitchers.” On July 18 of the same year Benjamin writes to Marcus C. Stephens that “ ... six pairs of Porcelain Jugs from my son’s factory might be forwarded for sale in your town.” These letters reveal several important aspects of the Tucker factory production, namely that pitchers were an early ware, they were made in pairs, and they probably were intended as presentation rather than utilitarian pieces. Indeed, most of the surviving Tucker is the distinctive pitcher form recorded as no. 7 in their monochrome pattern book, where it was described as Vase shape. Although an English pitcher with a similar shape and molded decoration under the spout is known, the Tucker form, with its fluted base, seems to be unique. To the basic blank, which, sold for one dollar, could be added various embellishments, from simple banding to complex gilt and polychrome floral decoration. While the polychrome pattern book illustrates eleven different floral and gilt decorations for this type of pitcher, none of the Bayou Bend examples conforms exactly to the patterns, suggesting that they served more as a guideline than an exact model.  In terms of decoration, the vase-shaped pitchers at Bayou Bend range from the severe but sophisticated example with peach banding at the neck in the French taste (see B.22.4) to simple polychrome floral with minimal gilding (see B.22.7.1–2) to floral decoration enclosed in gilt wreaths with musical trophies above (see B.22.6.1–2 and B.22.5.1–2).

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.