Westerwald/Rhenish stoneware chamberpot

Notes

This is a fragment of a stoneware chamberpot produced in the Westerwald region of Germany. German stonewares played an important part of the English and colonial ceramic market of the eighteenth century. These vessels were available in a variety of forms but most commonly as jugs, mugs and chamberpots, and were most often decorated with a combination of incised and molded decorations enhanced with the use of cobalt and manganese underglaze painting. Generally, the prevalence of these kinds of stonewares diminished throughout the eighteenth century.

Stoneware was an excellent ceramic for forms such as chamberpots, as it provided a relatively cheap, strong, waterproof vessel. The fragments here clearly show the vessel’s flat bottomed base, and the attachment of a single thick strap handle, as well as, the characteristic incised and painted floral medallions that often adorned chamberpots in the mid-eighteenth century. Chamberpots would have been used by the full range of the free and enslaved community at Mount Vernon.

Object Type

Ceramic

Has it Been Conserved?

No

Where Was It Found?

Project Site: House for Families    [more details]