Redware

European

In European contexts "redware" usually means an unglazed ("dry-bodied") stoneware, typically used for serving or drinking drinks. The term is especially used for pottery from the 17th and 18th centuries, before porcelain, whether imported from East Asia or made in Europe, became cheap enough to be used very widely. In this period red stoneware was used for vessels, especially teapots, jugs and mugs, which were relatively expensive and carefully made and decorated. Chinese Yixing clay teapots, an unglazed stoneware type made from a special type of clay, came to Holland through the East India companies with tea consignments and provided exemplars which were often copied with various degrees of closeness. Soon a European design vocabulary was used as well.

A Delftware manufacturer announced in 1678 that he was making "red teapots", of which no examples are known to survive. The Dutch Elers brothers brought the style to Staffordshire pottery in the 1690s, after finding a suitable source of clay, and were widely imitated there. Some red stoneware by rival Dutch potters including Ary de Milde from the years around 1700 does survive, closely copying Yixing pots in style. Johann Friedrich Böttger was in contact with some of these and developed a rival "Böttger ware", a dark red stoneware first sold in 1710, and manufactured and imitated by others, all up to about 1740. It was Böttger's first commercial ware and a significant stage in his development of porcelain in Europe, which he was soon making at the Meissen porcelain factory. Josiah Wedgwood later refined the type, and gave the decoration a fashionable turn towards Neoclassicism, with his "Rosso Antico" body. This was usually decorated with sprigged reliefs in black, creating pleasing contrasts like those in his earlier Jasperware.

American

In American contexts "redware" usually means earthenware with a reddish body, whether glazed or not. In fact it was very often given a white or other glaze, either tin-glazed or lead-glazed, though it is more usual to describe them as lead-glazed. Depending on the locality, this was the basic utilitarian pottery of the Colonial period of North America. It was often complemented by imported or American stoneware for large vessels where the added strength was useful. The name distinguishes the type from various other earthenwares with white, grey or yellow colours to the fired body, depending on the particular clay used. Some redware was imported from England. Later, American stoneware in particular, and various types of modern wares, including porcelain, took over for many types of objects.

Major museum collections concentrate on the larger dishes, platters and jugs that are glazed, often in yellowish tones, and painted with bold folk art designs, even well into the 19th century. But these special decorated pieces are rather untypical of the mass of sherds found by archaeologists excavating sites of the period. Many of these fancy pieces are dated, signed or marked with a stamp.

"Red ware" is widely used in archaeology to distinguish local types of red pottery from types with other colours found in the same region. Generally these are unglazed earthenware where the red colour is easily visible in complete pieces. Examples of types include: Red Polished Ware, of which there are five main unrelated types, all ancient, from Egypt, India, Cyprus, North Africa, and Roman Europe; the Black and red ware culture of Bronze Age India (individual objects are either black or red); African red slip ware; Roman "red gloss ware" or Terra sigillata; Salado or Roosevelt Red Ware, Arizona, c. 1280 to 1450 AD, and one form of Romano-British Crambeck Ware.