Imagine that your country lost a war a few decades ago, is about
to lose another war to the same country; yet you, the owner of a
well-established pottery business, decide to sell dishes
featuring images of your enemy’s victorious battles! As
archaeologist Ivor Noël Hume writes, “… to put pots before
principle …” was an old habit in Staffordshire, a center of
pottery in England long before the War of 1812. Why weren’t
American potters creating these patriotic pots? It wasn’t until
after the Civil War that America could compete with more
industrialized England. In Historical Staffordshire Jeffrey
Snyder writes, “So successful were the English potters that
American colonial governments instituted aggressive “Buy
American” plans, but to no avail.” One notable attempt at
creating an American pottery business took place in Philadelphia
in 1770 when Gousse Bonnin and George Morris produced tea wares
with transfer-printed Chinoiserie designs in blue underglaze. In
The Porcelain of Bonnin and Morris, an article in An