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Collectors’ Forum at Old Sturbridge Village Highlights Ceramics in New England Sept. 11

Authors, artisans, curators, and collectors celebrate ceramics history
Pottery demonstrations, kiln firing, rare museum ceramics on display



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(Sturbridge, Mass.) July 14, 2010 – Old Sturbridge Village will present a day-long Collectors’ Forum on Sat. Sept. 11 highlighting “Ceramics in New England,” featuring noted authors, artisans, and curators, pottery demonstrations, a redware kiln firing, a one day only display of ceramics from the OSV collection, and a wine and cheese reception.

OSV Collectors’ Forum speakers will include Pat Halfpenny, recently retired from her position as Director of Museum Collections at Winterthur Museum; Don Carpentier, master craftsman and Founder and Director of the Historic Eastfield Foundation of Nassau, NY; and independent museum consultant Nan Wolverton, former Old Sturbridge Village Curator of Decorative Arts. The event is open to the public; cost is $80 per person; $60 for museum members. For details: www.osv.org/collectors;
800-SEE-1830.

Pat Halfpenny, author of Success to America: English Pottery for the Patriotic American Market, is a renowned authority on Staffordshire pottery in the 18th century and spent 20 years as Keeper of Ceramics at the City Museum & Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. At the OSV Collectors’ Forum, she will discuss the Staffordshire – Liverpool trade that supplied a unique class of patriotic pottery to American customers in the 1765-1815 time period.

As America won independence from Britain and established a position on the world stage, sympathetic English potters produced ceramics that commemorated the American cause. Decoration memorialized revolutionary heroes and presidents, hand-painted personalized mementoes were designed for maritime merchants, and printed and painted patriotic imagery of all kinds gave support and credibility to the young nation.

A self-taught master potter, Don Carpentier is famous for his Mochaware, the vibrantly colored slip-decorated and lathe-turned earthenware of the style found in 18th- and 19th-century kitchens and taverns. Using authentic methods and tools, Carpentier creates Mochaware pieces that are difficult to distinguish from the originals.

In addition to his Mochaware, Carpentier is known for founding Eastfield Village, in East Nassau, NY, a collection of 27 rescued and reconstructed structures from the 1790-1840 time period, where he now hosts workshops to teach bygone skills and preserve historic early American trades. He has been featured in the New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Early American Life, on Antiques Road Show, and has served as an expert advisor on such films as The Bostonians and The Age of Innocence.

At the OSV Collectors’ Forum, Carpentier will present The Potter's Art, Early English Potters Tools and What They Made, which will explore his original, in-depth research of the ceramics, production tools, and archaeological remains of the English potters, shedding new light and interest on the ceramics exported to and used in the United States in the period of the 1780s to the 1850s. Don will also have a large display of the tools and related objects of his research, alongside the large collection of original ceramics from the Old Sturbridge Village collection.

Nan Wolverton, who is the current president of the China Student’s Club of Boston, will present Every Lady is Requested to Call – Purchasing Ceramics in Early 19th-Century Central Massachusetts, which is based on her ongoing research and work with the Old Sturbridge Village collection. In the early 1800s, local potters provided red earthenware for utilitarian use, but local merchants supplied the imported wares that the residents of rural New England coveted for their tables and used daily.

Women were becoming increasingly important consumers in this period. Using newspaper advertisements, merchants’ accounts, probate records, archeological evidence, and examples from Old Sturbridge Village and other collections, Wolverton will consider the marketing and acquisition of ceramics in the center of the Commonwealth.

To culminate the day’s activities, Collector’s Forum attendees are invited to a wine & cheese reception at the Old Sturbridge Village Hervy Brooks pottery shop, where potters will be stoking the Village’s massive 24-foot-high brick kiln to 1,900 degrees Fahrenheit and fire a year’s worth of vintage-style redware pottery hand-crafted at the museum.

Built with 15,000 bricks, the Old Sturbridge Village kiln is an “updraft bottle kiln,” of the style used in the early 1800s. When fully loaded for firing, the kiln holds 800 freshly glazed pots stacked 10 feet high. It takes three cords of wood stoked over 24 hours to bring the kiln to maximum firing temperature of 1,900 degrees. At that temperature, the kiln bricks glow and the flames roar, rising 24 feet high to come out of the top of the stack. The pottery is fired all night, and it takes another 40 hours for the kiln to cool before the dramatic “drawing the kiln” – unloading the finished wares.

Old Sturbridge Village is one of the oldest and largest living history museums in the country and celebrates New England life from 1790 – 1840. The museum is open year round. For details: www.osv.org; 1-800-733-1830.

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