Skip Navigation

Gravy Bowl with Lid, "Passaic Falls, State of New Jersey"

Decorative Arts and Design

These ceramics are decorated with American landscape scenes and were made in England for the American market. Before the 1840s, only the elite could afford dinnerware, then made of expensive porcelain. One of the early fruits of the Industrial Revolution was the production of inexpensive machine-molded and mechanically decorated earthenware for the middle class. These objects were decorated by the transfer technique, in which the scene is engraved on a metal plate, inked, printed on paper, and then pressed, or transferred, onto the ceramic body.
MEDIUM Earthenware
DATES ca. 1825-1830
DIMENSIONS 6 1/8 x 5 5/8 x 4 13/16 in. (15.6 x 14.3 x 12.2 cm)  (show scale)
MARKINGS On bottom: printed in blue underglaze, eagle bearing banner which reads, "E PLURIBUS UNUM" standing on a rectangle which has printed within "PASSAIC FALLS / STATE OF NEW JERSEY"; impressed "B"
SIGNATURE no signature
INSCRIPTIONS no inscriptions
ACCESSION NUMBER 60.213.189a-b
CREDIT LINE Gift of Mrs. William C. Esty
CATALOGUE DESCRIPTION Earthenware gravy bowl (a) and lid (b) with blue under glaze decoration (pictured with platter, 60.213.187). (a) Bowl: oval base with feather fleur-de-lis handles on either end. Border: Shells with seaweed and foliage around base, top edge of bowl and edge of lid. View on side: "Passaic Falls," riverside with falls between two bluffs with figure standing on shore on both sides of bowl. Source of view: Drawing by Alexander Robertson (1768-1841). (b) Lid: oval with notch cut out for ladle in one end with rose shaped finial. Condition: Good, little chip on edge of lid, chip on edge of bowl.
MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION Enoch Wood & Sons (active 1818-1846). Gravy Bowl with Lid, "Passaic Falls, State of New Jersey," ca. 1825-1830. Earthenware, 6 1/8 x 5 5/8 x 4 13/16 in. (15.6 x 14.3 x 12.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mrs. William C. Esty, 60.213.189a-b. Creative Commons-BY (Photo: , 60.213.187_60.213.189a-b_reference_SL1.jpg)
IMAGE group, 60.213.187_60.213.189a-b_reference_SL1.jpg.
"CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.
RIGHTS STATEMENT Creative Commons-BY
You may download and use Brooklyn Museum images of this three-dimensional work in accordance with a Creative Commons license. Fair use, as understood under the United States Copyright Act, may also apply. Please include caption information from this page and credit the Brooklyn Museum. If you need a high resolution file, please fill out our online application form (charges apply). For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.
RECORD COMPLETENESS
Not every record you will find here is complete. More information is available for some works than for others, and some entries have been updated more recently. Records are frequently reviewed and revised, and we welcome any additional information you might have.