Poetically posh: Richard Briggs's Longfellow jug, Wedgwood, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in the American home

Abstract

In 1881, ceramics and glass merchant Richard Briggs placed a new batch of transfer printed, polychrome enameled earthenware jugs on the shelves of his well-known Boston store. Fresh off the boat from Josiah Wedgwood & Sons in Staffordshire, England, these jugs sported a portrait of the celebrated poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on one side and a verse from the Longfellow poem “Kéramos” on the opposite side. These “Longfellow jugs,” as Briggs called them, were an overnight sensation. While around fifteen of these jugs survive in American museum collections and there are many to be found on the antiques market, there has been little scholarship devoted to them. This thesis seeks to tell the complete story of the Longfellow jug, outlining how and why Briggs collaborated with Wedgwood to design it and exploring how the public responded to it. At its core, this thesis argues that Richard Briggs brought together a highly calculated combination of traditional and contemporary design elements in the Longfellow jug in hopes of dazzling the Boston literary elite with whom he was well acquainted.