Plate

CC0 Public Domain Designation

Arts of the Americas

1792

Rudolph Drach (American, 1759–after 1814)
Bedminster Township, Pennsylvania

Little is known about the potter of this plate, Rudolph Drach. The artist’s grandfather Rudolph Drach was among seventy-seven Palatinate Germans who, along with their families, arrived in Philadelphia on August 29, 1730, and he eventually settled in Bucks County. This plate, made in 1792 according to the incised inscription, was originally in the collection of Edwin Atlee Barber and was illustrated in his Tulip Ware of the Pennsylvania-German Potters (1903). Sgraffito decoration–the act of incising the surface to reveal the clay body beneath–characterizes many of the ceramics created in Bucks County in the Pennsylvania German tradition. Such pottery features exuberant colors and ornamentation through traditional decorative motifs, including the bird, tulip, and star shapes that decorate this plate.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Rudolph Drach
Title: Plate
Place: Bedminster (Object made in:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1792
Medium: Earthenware (redware), cream-colored slip, and colored lead glazes
Inscriptions: Signed, inscribed, and dated front, top-left through top-middle, incised: "rudolf drach / hefner in bädmin / ster / daùnschile / 1792 [Rudolf Drach / potter in Bedmin / ster / township / 1792]".
Dimensions: 4.8 × 28.7 × 28.7 cm (1 15/16 × 11 5/16 × 11 5/16 in.)
Credit Line: Field Museum Exchange
Reference Number: 1907.122
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/87918/manifest.json

Edwin Atlee Barber, “Inscribed Pottery of the Pennsylvania Germans,” New England Magazine 12 (Mar., 1895), 34 (ill. line drawing).
Edwin Atlee Barber, Tulip Ware of the Pennsylvania-German Potters: An Historical Sketch of the Art of Slip-Decoration in the United States (Patterson and White Co., 1903), 117–8, fig. 33 (ill. line drawing).
Hans Vogel, “Pennsylvaniendeutsche Volkskunst,” Hessische Heimat 1, no. 3 (1951), 50–51 (ill.).
Beatrice B. Garvan and Charles F. Hummel, The Pennsylvania Germans: A Celebration of their Arts, 1683–1850, exh. cat. (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1982), 175, cat. 3.
Scott T. Swank, Arts of the Pennsylvania Germans (Norton, 1983), 190.
Judith A. Barter and Monica Obniski, For Kith and Kin: The Folk Art Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, 2012), 35, cat. 5 (ill.).

Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania Germans: A Celebration of Their Arts 1683–1850, Oct. 17, 1982–Jan. 9, 1983, cat. 3; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Mar. 5–May 15, 1983; San Francisco, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, July 2–Sept. 3, 1983; Art Institute of Chicago, Dec. 10, 1983–Jan. 29, 1984.
Art Institute of Chicago, Photography + Folk Art: Looking for America in the 1930s, Sept. 21, 2019–Jan. 19, 2020, no cat.

Edwin Atlee Barber (1851-1916), Philadelphia, by 1894; sold to the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, June 20, 1894 [Field Museum accession list, 371-77350; copy in curatorial object file]; by exchange to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1907.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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