Liverpool ware bowl tall ship CAROLINE
Maker
Adams Pottery
(1657 - 1892)
Date1657-1892
Object number00036442
NameBowl
MediumCeramic, paint
DimensionsOverall: 120 x 250 mm, 1.34 kg
ClassificationsCommemorative artefacts
Credit LineANMM Collection
Purchased with USA Bicentennial Gift funds
HistoryThe Adams family have been operating potteries in Staffordshire, England, since the 1650s and possibly earlier. Although now owned by the famous Wedgwood group the factories still exist and are still being run by members of the Adams family. Now the twelfth and thirteenth generations traceable back in a direct line to the seventeenth century pottery of Robert and John Adams. Family records show that there were 'Adams' classed as master potters in the area as far back as 1448.
William Adams 1798-1865, of Greenfield, Tunstall
This son and first partner of William Adams (3) was a prolific producer of American scenic and historic china. On his father's death he became managing director of the family business. About 1834 he built the Greenfield pottery in Tunstall, the first important one there, to which the firms offices, styled Adams & Sons, were moved.
Active in the American trade, he visited the United States in 1821 and in 1825. Then or later, he secured prints of American scenes done after paintings by Thomas Cole, W. G. Wall and others. From the prints he copied his 15 scenic designs. There was also the Log Cabin plate for William Henry Harrison's presidential election in 1840. All the patterns were transfer printed in the, brown, light blue and black but no dark blue. Each piece in these patterns has on the reverse, title of the particular view in the same colour and the mark of W. Adams & Sons, impressed.
About 1830 Adams & Sons also produced its Columbus series of 14 designs based on events in the discoverer's career. Transfer printing for these was in light colours, ranging through pink, brown, green and purple as well as black. A special printed mark was used. An anchor and a shield lettered Columbus and, on a scarf below, W. A.& S.
After William (4) died in 1865, the potteries in Stoke-on-Trent were sold and everything moved Tunstall where the business was conducted by his sons, William and Percy W. L. Adams. They added porcelain tablewares to their other products. In turn they were succeeded by their sons and grandsons who came to direct their potteries. (www.thepotteries.org)
