Two Incised and Cobalt-Blue Decorated Vessels, Thomas Warne and Joshua Letts, South Amboy, New Jersey, 1806 and 1812-16

Jug:

Lewis Scranton, Killingworth, Connecticut, 1991.

Crock:

Fran Goldstein, Haworth, New Jersey;

Ron Bassin, A Bird in the Hand Antiques, Florham Park, New Jersey, 2006.

Leslie and Peter Warwick, Love At First Sight: Discovering Stories About Folk Art & Antiques Collected by Two Generations & Three Families, (New Jersey: 2022), pp. 95-6, fig. 164a-b, and fig. 165a-b.

There were three phases of ownership of the “Warne & Letts Pottery”. The stoneware had a variety of stamps and coggle wheel decorations depending on the phase and sometimes had the location and date stamped on the stoneware. In the first phase, circa 1804, contemporaneous with the founding of Morgan, Van Wickle, & Green, Thomas Warne founded his own pottery across the street from the old Captain Morgan pottery in Cheesequake and stamped his pottery “WARNE”. Thomas Warne married Captain Morgan’s daughter and General Morgan’s sister, Mary. For examples of stoneware by Captain Morgan, please see lots 101 in the Americana online sale and 35 in the Important Americana sale.

In the second phase, Thomas Warne partnered with his son-in-law, Joshua Letts, who had married Warne’s daughter, Meleny Warne. They worked together and the stoneware was marked, “WARNE & LETTs”. The crock stamped T.*W.*J.*L. was made about 1807-1813 and is indicative of Thomas Warne and Joshua Letts' phase II. It bears a coggle wheel pattern of a band of vertical lines with teeth above and below the initials and a manganese holly leaf is stamped underneath on the body.

Thomas Warne died about 1813 and Letts ran the pottery alone until 1815, when General Morgan bought out the Letts Pottery from Thomas Warne’s widow, Mary Warne. Letts and his wife, Meleny, sold General Morgan 10 1⁄2 acres of land and were in Troy, New York by 1819, according to the 1820 Troy, New York Census.