Beehive Bowl
Choice Apple Green Paint
Rare Period Repair    

New England, ca. 1780-1820.

Original dry apple-green paint on maple with exceptional color and a time-worn complex well-patinated mottled surface.

No doubt owing to the then hard to acquire beautiful green pigment, and continued usefulness of the bowl, it was expertly mended long ago with copper-wire (now heavily oxidized) in a manner that we often see on early ceramics.

The combination of delightful color, complex surface, and period repair elevate this bowl considerably in interest and value above most we see. It also speaks to the resourcefulness of colonial New Englanders.

A good example of the beehive form, it is thinly turned, has a molded rim, is footed, and shows widely-spaced slow-lathe tool marks between prominent beehive “ribs”. Note the burnishing of the raised outer edges of the foot, and within it the chiseled-off remains of the lathe block.

With strong shrinkage across the grain almost to an oval, this medium-sized bowl has a diameter of about 12 x 11 inches (a full inch of shrinkage) and about 3 inches tall. From a fine New York State collection. An exciting example of an otherwise common form.