TRADE SIGN

The most complex ceramic tradition in the southern backcountry is associated with the Moravians — a Protestant Germanic sect that established meticulously planned Congregation towns that were governed by the church and, in effect, closed to outsiders. During the early 1750s, the Moravian church purchased a tract of land encompassing nearly 100,000 acres in North Carolina that would come to include three towns, Bethabara (1753), Bethania (1759), and Salem (1766).  Although Bethabara was conceived as a temporary settlement, the Moravians wasted little time in establishing trades to serve the community.

Gottfried Aust arrived in the fall of 1755 and began making utilitarianwares, pipes, and stove plates the following year. Subsequent production likely included dishes, plates, and hollow ware with naturalistic floral decoration precisely applied in polychrome slips.  The piece de résistance of Aust’s work is this trade sign that he made for his shop two years after assuming the position of master potter in Salem. Arguably the most important piece of eighteenth-century American slipware, the sign is unique in having an incised date, letters, and scrollwork filled in with white slip. Other pottery attributed to Aust and his apprentice Rudolph Christ (1750-1783) is distinguished by having a dark brown slip ground and geometric motifs including vandykes and abstract floral sprays.