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Baltimore developed into an important commercial center and port over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries. Founded in 1729 on the Chesapeake Bay, the city was ideally situated for Atlantic maritime trade, and as manufacturing grew, its reach expanded westward with the opening in 1830 of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The surrounding region contained significant deposits of clay, flint, and other raw materials, as well as access to coal—resources essential to the development of a ceramic industry. As a major port of entry, second only to New York, Baltimore welcomed the many European migrants who ensured a steady supply of labor. All of these factors contributed to the success of Baltimore’s potteries in the late 19th century.This teapot is a good example of the majolica produced by the Baltimore-based D. F. Haynes & Co. in the 1880s. David Francis Haynes (1835–1908), a ceramics and glass importer and wholesaler, began operating the Chesapeake Pottery (founded 1880) in the Locust Point section of the city in 1882 and soon became known as one of the important American manufacturers of both practical and ornamental ceramics. One of D. F. Haynes & Co.’s early principal product lines was its “Clifton Decor” majolica, introduced in 1882, which remained in production until about 1886. Haynes’s manufacture of majolica reflects the popularity of the colorfully-glazed ware among American consumers, an appetite that had grown from the mid-1860s onwards when the English-made majolica was first imported in large quantities to the United States. American potteries like D. F. Haynes & Co. began to produce majolica in the late 1870s and through the 1880s, before the ware fell increasingly out of fashion in the 1890s. The white grounds found on the “Clifton Decor” ware made by Haynes reflect a popular style of majolica decoration pioneered by the British firm Josiah Wedgwood & Sons in 1878–9, and subsequently made by a variety of English and American makers.The Chesapeake Pottery began production of Clifton ware in 1882 and among the first designs were “six sizes of bramble jugs, teapots and sugars of the same design” as well as “cake plates and pickles of very attractive shapes, a very handsome line of vases, comports, salads, lemonade bowls, and many other useful and beautiful articles” as the American trade periodical "Crockery and Glass Journal" reported in August 1882. Chesapeake’s “Bramble” decoration is clearly modeled after a Wedgwood pattern of the same name, which the English firm first introduced on a garden pot in 1868 and then on tea- and dessert wares in about 1878. In fact, some pieces made by Chesapeake are direct copies of Wedgwood shapes, including the teapot. While both firms also used a white ground glaze, the other glaze colors of the Baltimore version are noticeably brighter, and its handle and spout are painted in a mottled combination of greens and browns not found on Wedgwood examples.
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