Fancy and Plain: Ceramics
Ceramics
There were many direct importers and dealers in French porcelain, English earthenware, and common crockery in New Orleans. Some of the earliest shops on Canal Street were dedicated to ceramics, serving as agents for English potteries. Similar businesses in the French Quarter imported fine French porcelain to the Creole city. As mass production increased the output of potteries in Staffordshire and Limoges through the nineteenth century, retailers in New Orleans were able to offer a wider variety of goods to their customers. They posted advertisements that listed tea sets, dinner services, chamber pots, and other household furnishings in fancy and plain ceramics, all available at low prices.
Hill & Henderson (1825?–34); Henderson & Gaines (1836–66)
Hill & Henderson was in business at 14 Canal Street by 1825. The firm operated as a direct importer, receiving hundreds of crates of English earthenware on ships from Boston, New York, and Liverpool. After the death of a business partner, the firm changed its name to Henderson & Gaines in 1836. Both Hill & Henderson and Henderson & Gaines were agents for the Davenport Pottery in Staffordshire, England. Ceramics bearing the retailers’ marks have been found in public and private collections and in archaeological digs throughout the Mississippi Valley.
V. & O. Vignaud (1838?–43)
Brothers Valsin and Oscar Vignaud worked together to import fine French porcelain for their Creole customers in the French Quarter. Valsin was a successful merchant with a stake in the armed brig Venus, which carried freight across the Atlantic Ocean. While Valsin handled the shipping, Oscar managed the chinaware and fancy goods store on Chartres Street, which they had established by 1838.
Courtesy of Oak Alley Foundation, O2013.001.003c6 and O2013.001.003f9
Samuel E. Moore & Co. (1840–78)
Crockery merchant Samuel E. Moore was born in Boston, came to New Orleans in 1834 and established his own business on Camp Street, in the American Sector, in 1840. He advertised himself as an “importer of crockery, china, and glassware,” selling supplies for planters, families, steamboats, and hotels in and outside of the city. His inventory of fine china, common crockery, cutlery, and glass included French porcelain by 1850.
P. R. Fell & Co. (1847?–59)
Peter R. Fell, of Orange County, New York, came to New Orleans in 1832. By 1847, he had started his business selling “common and fine crockery, china, dining and tea services, cut and pressed glassware” at 84 Common Street, near the Veranda Hotel. By the late 1850s, P. R. Fell & Co. was an official agent for several Staffordshire potters. In September 1859, Fell partnered with Alanson Marsh and relocated to 62 and 64 Gravier Street. The Fell & Marsh household-goods business likely collapsed during the Civil War, because P. R. Fell is listed as an insurance agent in advertisements and directories after the war.
John Gauche (active 1843–68); Mrs. John Gauche (active 1868–83); John Gauche’s Sons (1883–1906)
John Gauche was born in Alsace-Lorraine and was established in New Orleans by the early 1840s. He ran a successful business on Chartres Street importing French porcelain and crockery and was one of the leaders of the New Orleans business community in the mid-nineteenth century. After the Civil War, Gauche bought an unfinished building designed by James Freret in the Moorish style. He fixed up the building and moved the majority of his crockery business to its location on Lafayette Square. When Gauche passed away in 1868, his wife ran the business for several years. In 1883 Gauche’s three younger sons, Winfield, George, and Edward, took over the business. The company suffered a setback when the cast-iron Moresque Building caught fire and burned in two hours, the materials of the building creating a furnace for the contents inside. The company continued for a few years, but the sons liquidated the stock in 1906.
E. Offner & Co. (1872–1912)
In 1872 New York–born Ephraim Offner, a crockery salesman in New Orleans, partnered with other experienced ceramics dealers to sell china, glassware, crockery, and other “house furnishings” at low prices under the firm name E. Offner & Co. By the late 1870s, Offner was an agent for Haviland & Co., the largest exporter of French porcelain to the American market in the South. In 1885 the store had a special display of china in the window, showcasing a porcelain dinner service decorated specifically for the king of Carnival and an elaborate game service bearing the pattern Haviland custom designed for President Rutherford B. Hayes.
Courtesy of Oak Alley Foundation, O2013.001.003c6 and O2013.001.003f9