Pitcher

Art Historical Context

This small earthenware pitcher presents a broad, low-slung form that widens dramatically from a narrow foot before tapering to a short neck and wide mouth with a simple pouring lip. Its surface carries a soft greenish-yellow glaze flecked with darker specks, the glossy finish catching light across the gently rounded belly and along the sturdy, curved handle that joins neck to shoulder. Produced by the Chelsea Keramic Art Works under Hugh C. Robertson between about 1880 and 1889, the pitcher belongs to the early flowering of American art pottery. Its modest size—roughly four and three-quarters inches high by six inches wide—belies the care taken with both shape and glaze, qualities that placed such studio ceramics at the forefront of design innovation in the late nineteenth century. Today it resides in the American Wing of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, a gift of Robert A. Ellison Jr. in 2018.