Faience Manufacturing Ewer
date: label: date made
content: c. 1884-1890
label: date made
content: ca 1884-1890
name: label: maker
content: Lycett, Edward
label: maker
content: Faience Manufacturing Company
notes: label: Description
content: About the Arts and Crafts Movement:
label: Description
content: Beginning in England in the early 1880s, the Arts and Crafts movement spread across the United States and Europe by the late 1880s. It celebrated the importance of beauty in everyday objects and urged a reconnection to nearby nature. The movement resisted the way industrial mass production undermined artisan crafts and was inspired by the ideas of artisan William Morris and writer John Ruskin. Valuing hand-made objects using traditional materials, it was known for a color palette of earth tones. Its artistic principles replaced realistic, colorful, and three-dimensional designs with more abstract and simplified forms using subdued tones. Stylized plant forms and matte glazes echoed a shift to quiet restraint in household décor. The Arts and Crafts movement also embraced social ideals, including respect for skilled hand labor and concern for the quality of producers’ lives. The movement struggled with the tension between the cost of beautiful crafts and the limited number of households able to afford them. Some potters relied on practical products such as drain tiles to boost income or supported themselves with teaching or publications. Arts and Crafts influence extended to other endeavors, including furniture, such as Stickley’s Mission Style, and architecture, such as the Arts and Crafts bungalow, built widely across the United States. American Arts and Crafts pottery flourished between 1880 and the first World War, though several potteries continued in successful operation into the later 20^th^ century.
label: Description
content: About Faience Manufacturing Company: The Faience Manufacturing Company was an early commercial art pottery established in 1880 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York. Initially, the factory produced cream-colored earthenware with underglaze painting in the style of the fashionable French faience and Limoges pottery; faience, the white tin-glazed earthenware used in France, inspired the company name. Four years later, the firm hired the well-known English potter Edward Lycett as decorator and director, and he introduced a new clay body and hard porcelain glaze. The Faience wares became known for their Near Eastern forms, eccentric handles, and elaborate jewel-like ornament; exotic imagery of Japanese birds and flowers was common. The larger pieces, often requiring more than one firing, resulted in their elevated status as expensive one-of-a-kind art objects. However, the pottery also produced smaller objects such as trays, perfume vases, and boxes. Lycett left the firm in 1890 when it was sold, and the firm closed in 1891.
label: Description
content: About the Object:
label: Description
content: An American porcelain moon-shaped ewer covered with a transparent glaze made and decorated by Edward Lycett. The vase has a flattened bulbous body like a canteen on an oval base with a cylindrical neck and bulbous expansion just below the lip. The pouring lip of the vase is extended and the attached handle is shaped like an elegant curved loop. There is gilding present on the lip, handles and foot. Overall, the vase has decorated raised gold flowers, grasses, twig with wheat, and Japanesque lillies on a mottled dark and light blue ground. The monogram of the manufacturer was printed on the bottom in green and "E.Lycett" was hand signed in red. The body of the vase was cracked and repaired and the lip has missing pieces.
label: Description
content: This piece is one of only two known to be made and signed by Edward Lycett at the Faience Manufacturing Company. It represents the smaller-scale objects produced with Aesthetic imagery. In order to distinguish the company from domestic and imported porcelain, Edward Lycett produced a wide range of pottery, from six inches to twenty-seven inches tall, in unique shapes exhibiting the Aesthetic taste towards exoticism.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: New York, Brooklyn, Greenpoint
topic: label: Subject
content: Art Pottery
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
label: See more items in
content: Domestic Furnishings
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Edward Lycett
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CE.96473
label: catalog number
content: 96473
label: accession number
content: 30736
objectType: label: Object Name
content: ewer
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: green (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: red (overall color)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, porcelain, hard-paste (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: gilt (overall production method/technique)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 7 1/2 in x 5 in x 2 in; 19.05 cm x 12.7 cm x 5.08 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 7 1/4 in x 4 11/16 in x 2 1/8 in; 18.415 cm x 11.90625 cm x 5.3975 cm