IMPORTANT AND RARE BLUE DECORATED STONEWARE WAX-SEALED 'BASEBALL PLAYER' JAR, GREENSBORO OR NEW GENEVA, PENNSYLVANIA, CIRCA 1875

Discovered forty years ago by an antiques collector;

Crocker Farm, Inc., Sparks, Maryland, Stoneware Auction, July 19, 2008, lot 1;

Stephen Score, Boston, Massachusetts

This important work of ceramic folk art is the only known example of American stoneware that depicts a baseball player. It was made approximately fifteen years after baseball became a semi-professional sport in America, during a period when it was being hailed in newspapers as "America's pastime." The jar may have been made in response to the rise of the first professional baseball team in nearby Pittsburgh in 1876.