Rare Gurdon Robins & Co. (Fayetteville, NC, 1818-1823), Three Gallon Jug

Circa 1819-1823, possibly by Edward Webster, salt glazed stoneware jug with ring tooled spout, iron-oxide wash, ovoid form over a rounded foot, cobalt decorated at the early stamped signature "Gurdon Robins / & Co. / Fayetteville" with three punctate capacity mark "III."

17 x 10 x 10 in.

From the Collection of Quincy and Betty Scarborough, Fayetteville, North Carolina

According to Quincy and Samuel Scarborough's North Carolina Decorated Stoneware: The Webster school of Folk Potters, the pottery firm of Gurdon & Robbins began as a partnership of Gurdon Robins and Timothy Savage. Their official beginnings in the pottery trade date to around 1818-1819 in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Being business opportunists from the Connecticut area, they hired members of the Webster family of West Hartford, most notably Edward Webster and his family, to bring stoneware to Fayetteville, North Carolina between 1818-1823. After the close of the Gurdon Robins operation in 1823, property and tax records indicate Edward stayed in Fayetteville to set up his own pottery just west of the Robbins site at the Chicken Road location in Fayetteville. The mark on this jug is matches the mark on pg. 8 (Figure 3) of Quincy's aforementioned text.

Restored handle and its juncture at the rim; body with scattered small areas of pitting; a few minor chips to the foot rim.