Rhennish Stonewares

CTL Rhennish brown salt glazed stoneware cobalt


Material – Stoneware

Place of Origin – Raeren region, Rhineland

Stoneware was developed in Germany at the end of the 13th century. The majority of these were produced in the Raeren region of the Rhineland, a town in present-day Belgium, where suitable stoneware clays are abundant. These wares are exported to England beginning in the 14th century with the peak of this trade occurring during the 17th century. Because of their high firing temperatures, they are sturdy and non-porous vessels making them ideal for serving and storing foods and beverages.[i] In the beginning of the 17th century Rhenish stonewares are the most durable pottery available in Western Europe.[ii] Stoneware jugs were used for serving and drinking beer, ale, and cider. Before glass bottles become readily available in the mid-17th century, German stoneware vessels provided durable, non-porous, shipping and storage containers for liquids.[iii] The German stoneware industry continued to thrive throughout the nineteenth century and is still being produced today.[iv]

Rhenish stonewares are salt glazed, a glazing process that is completed while the vessel is being fired. When the vessels in the kiln have reached high enough temperatures to become vitrified, the potter throws common table salt into the kiln, the salt vaporizes and the sodium bonds with the silicas in the clay and forms a thin soda glass glaze on the surface.[v] This process can be repeated during the firing process until the desired glaze thickness is achieved. A signifying characteristic of salt glaze is that the glaze beads up on the surface of the vessel resulting in a pitted surface that looks similar to the rind of an orange. When the salt vaporizes in the kiln it creates a toxic sodium chloride vapor. Stoneware pottery was usually fired in a down-draught kiln which would disperse toxic fumes away from the work area.[vi] Rhenish stonewares were colored by adding different oxides during the glazing process - iron creates a brown color, cobalt for blue, and manganese for purple.[vii]

The English potters made Earthenware vessels and although they had the kiln technology to reach temperatures needed to make stonewares, it isn’t until 1672 that the king granted the first English patent to Fulham potter, John Dwight, for the exclusive right to make salt-glazed stonewares in England. The English develop their own brown stonewares and made copies of Rhenish stoneware varieties, but Rhenish stonewares continue to be imported into England throughout the 18th century and is produced in Frechen until the mid-19th century.[viii]

Rhenish Brown Salt Glazed Stonewares (late 13th to mid-19th century) A buff to gray bodied ware that is coated with a speckled brown slip and applied sprigged molded designs. These stonewares get their color from a brown iron oxide slip that is added to the pale gray stoneware body before it is fired. Sometimes on early vessels a cobalt blue wash was roughly applied before firing.

Rhenish Brown Salt Glazed stonewares were imported to England starting in 1450. Bartmann or bearded man wares are made initially in Cologne, Germany and later in Frenchen, a suburb west of Cologne, from 1550 to the early 18th century. These are mostly for storing liquids and serving beverages. The bottle sizes ranged from 1 pint to 5 gallons and were used for wine, cider, ale, oil, vinegar, or water.[ix] Baluster jugs were used for decanting into glass drinking vessels or ceramic mugs. The intricate molded armorial medallions were used as conspicuous consumption that conveyed the users’ political sympathies and religious ideologies.[x] The most iconic vessels are bulbous bottles or jugs with sprig molded decorations on the neck of a bearded man, known as the Bartmannkrug, or beaded man’s jug. Early jars, produced in Cologne, have a squat, bulbous body and the bartmann design with a square, flowing beard that is more detailed and cleanly applied. These earlier jars often have a sparsely applied cobalt wash, a practice which seems to not be common after 1650. Later 17th century jars, when the potteries were moved to the Cologne suburb of Frechen, have an elongated pear-shaped body and the bartmann design is more stylized and abstract.[xi] The popularity of Rhenish brown salt glazed stonewares declines after the mid-18th century when the English begin making their own stonewares and glass bottles become more readily available for shipping and storing liquids.[xii]

Fragments of Bartmann stoneware jugs have been recovered in the c.1670-1690s contexts at Charles Towne. These Bartmann fragments also have splotches of cobalt blue, a trait that isn’t common after 1650. It is possible that these are older vessels that the colonists brought with their personal household goods. Rhenish Brown Salt Glazed stonewares are rare in downtown, Charleston, but some were recovered from urban market contexts dating to c.1690-1739 suggesting that they were available in the markets during the late 17th to early 18th century.[xiii]

Westerwald (1590-1775, revived in 19th century, end of manufacture 1850) A gray-bodied pottery that is characterized by ornate sprig molding (applied molded relief), incised foliate scrollwork, and cordoned necks that were colored with a distinct cobalt blue wash.

Westerwald stonewares are named after the district where the pottery was made. Due to political unrest, starting in 1590, potters from Sigburg and Raeren began to migrate to the Westerwald region (Genzou, Genzhausen, and Hohr).[xiv] These potters create a prosperous new stoneware tradition referred to as Westerwald, that consists of highly decorative gray-bodied stoneware vessels.

Westerwald is a gray-bodied stoneware, decorated with ornate sprig molding, incised foliate or geometric designs and a cobalt blue glaze. The cobalt color is achieved by applying a cobalt blue oxide wash prior to firing. The potters achieved a gray colored ware by rapidly cooling the kiln after firing.[xv] The most common vessel forms in the late seventeenth century are jugs, straight-sided tankards, and round mugs. Earlier vessels have ornamental friezes. After 1675 Westerwald potters begin to use elaborate floral and geometric sprig molding and incised lines.[xvi] By the 1690s Westerwald potters begin crafting their Westerwald vessels to meet the preferences of a growing English market. We see a decline in quality with the increased demand for their wares and later vessels have simplified designs and the cobalt coloring tends to bleed outside of the incised lines.[xvii] A large floral motif was a common motif seen on eighteenth century mugs.[xviii] Chamber pots become a popular vessel form in the 18th century. We have not identified any Westerwald chamber pot fragments in the 17th century ceramic assemblage at Charles Towne Landing.

Westerwald was broadly marketed and are predominate wares in the late 17th and 18th century English import markets. The height of its popularity is in the 18th century and it falls out of favor in the 1760s when the English salt glazed potters begin to dominate the stoneware market. In North America, it falls out of favor around the American Revolution.[xix] There was a revival of this stoneware tradition in the late 19th century and it continues to be made in the Westerwald region today.

Manganese Westerwald (c.1630, common 1660s-1725) A gray-bodied Westerwald stoneware that in addition to the cobalt blue wash the potters added a distinct manganese purple pigment wash.

The use of both cobalt blue and manganese purple pigment wash is common in the late 17th century. The earliest example of the use of manganese purple is c.1630, but it isn’t commonly used until the 1660s. Initially the manganese is applied to the molded ornaments, and later in the first half of the 18th century we see it used in broad bands on the rilled or cordoned necks.[xx]

CTL Rhennish brown salt glazed stoneware

CTL Rhennish molded brown salt glazed stoneware sherd
CTL Rhennish Westerwald (top) cobalt (bottom) manganese



[i] K.J. Barton, Pottery in England from 3500BC-AD 1730 (A.S. Barnes and Company, South Brunswick, UK, 1975), 132; John A. Burrison, “Fluid Vessel: Journey of the Jug” In Ceramics in America, edited by Robert Hunter (Chipstone Foundation, Milwaukee, WI, 2006), 96-97; Howard Coutts, The Art of Ceramics: European Ceramic Design 1500-1830 (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2001), 57-58; Robin Hildyard, Browne Muggs: English Brown Stoneware (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK 1985), 11; Glenn C. Nelson, Ceramics: A Potter’s Handbook (University of Minnesota, Duluth, MN, 1971), 33-34; Beverly Straube, ”European Ceramics in the New World: The Jamestown Example”. In Ceramics in America, edited by Robert Hunter (Chipstone Foundation, Milwaukee, WI, 2001), 69; Charlotte Wilcoxen, Dutch Trade and Ceramics in America in the Seventeenth Century (Albany Institute of History & Art, Albany, NY, 1987), 73.

[ii] Ivor Noel Hume, A Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America (Vintage Books, New York, NY, 1991), 276.

[iii] Jeffrey P. Brain, Tunica Treasure, Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 71 (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1979), 74.

[iv] Burrison, “Fluid Vessel”, 96-97.

[v] Barton, Pottery in England, 132; Coutts, The Art of Ceramics, 52; Hildyard, Browne Muggs, 11; Daniel Rhodes, Clay and Glazes for the Potter (Chilton Book Company, Radnor, PA, 1973), 285; Glenn C. Nelson, Ceramics: A Potter’s Handbook (University of Minnesota, Duluth, MN, 1971), 214; Prudence M. Rice, Pottery Analysis: A Sourcebook (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1987), 100.

[vi] Barton, Pottery in England, 133; Brain, Tunica Treasure, 74; Coutts, The Art of Ceramics, 52; Nelson, Ceramics, 214; Rhodes, Clay and Glazes, 286-287; Rice, Pottery Analysis, 100.

[vii] Brain, Tunica Treasure, 74; Rice, Pottery Analysis, 337-339.

[viii] Cinda K. Baldwin, Great & Noble Jar: Traditional Stoneware of South Carolina (The University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA, 2014), 13; Barton, Pottery in England, 132; Coutts, The Art of Ceramics, 58-59; Noel Hume, A Guide to Artifacts, 277-278.

[ix] Brain, Tunica Treasure, 74; Barton, Pottery in England, 132; Noel Hume, A Guide to Artifacts, 55; Wilcoxen, “Dutch Trade”, 75-76.

[x] Brain, Tunica Treasure, 74; Straube, “European Ceramics”, 68-70.

[xi] Brain, Tunica Treasure, 74-75; Coutts, The Art of Ceramics, 52; Noel Hume, A Guide to Artifacts, 55-57; Wilcoxen, “Dutch Trade”, 75-76.

[xii] Brain, Tunica Treasure, 74-75.

[xiii] Martha A. Zierden and Elizabeth J. Reitz, Archaeology at City Hall: Charleston’s Colonial Beef Market (The Charleston Museum, Charleston, SC, 2005), 70. Associated with the 1690-1739 contexts for the Beef Market.

[xiv] Brain, Tunica Treasure, 77; Coutts, The Art of Ceramics, 55-56; Noel Hume, A Guide to Artifacts, 280; George Savage and Harold Newman, An Illustrated Dictionary of Ceramics (Thames & Hudson, London, UK 1985), 239,245,313.

[xv] Coutts, The Art of Ceramics, 56; Noel Hume, A Guide to Artifacts, 280; Rhodes, Clay and Glazes, 287.

[xvi] Noel Hume, A Guide to Artifacts, 281; Wilcoxen, “Dutch Trade”, 75.

[xvii] Brain, Tunica Treasure, 77.

[xviii] Wilcoxen, “Dutch Trade”, 75.

[xix] Brain, Tunica Treasure, 74; Noel Hume, A Guide to Artifacts, 283.

[xx] Brain, Tunica Treasure, 77; Coutts, The Art of Ceramics, 56; Noel Hume, A Guide to Artifacts, 281-283.