BOWL

Extending from Pennsylvania to southwestern Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley was the most important conduit for settlement in the southern backcountry. During the last half of the eighteenth century, thousands of Scots-Irish, English, German, and Swiss colonists traveled down the Great Wagon Road. Some were recent immigrants.  Others left more crowded areas of the Middle Atlantic region in search of less expensive land and greater opportunity. In this vast melting pot, potters with a multitude of cultural backgrounds found a ready market for their wares. Family potting dynasties established by John Weiss (1719-1804), Peter Bell, Jr., and others flourished from the mid 1750s through the
nineteenth century.

This massive slip-decorated bowl made by Peter Bell Jr. in Winchester, Virginia is the earliest piece of marked pottery from the northern Shenandoah Valley. Although few examples of his work are known, a prodigious body of pottery survives from the shops of his brothers John (1800-1880), Samuel (1811-1891), and Solomon (1817-1822).