Doe and Stag

In the mid-nineteenth century, Bennington was a leading center of pottery production in the United States. Christopher Webber Fenton and A.P. Lyman established Lyman, Fenton & Company there in 1848. This firm, which took the name United States Pottery Company in 1853, was one of the most prolific potteries in Bennington until it closed in 1858.

As artistic proprietor, Fenton won a respectable position for the pottery in the booming American ceramic industry by producing a variety of decorative porcelain and domestic earthenware. These wares were especially popular with a buying middle-class American public. The favorite Bennington products were utilitarian objects such as pitchers, table articles, and kitchen and household accessories, as well as fancy articles such as vases, trinket boxes, statuettes, animals, and novelty items. These were decorated with a variety of glazes including (but not limited to) brown Rockingham and flint enamel. Rockingham is the trade name for wares with a streaked reddish-brown or chocolate-brown glaze, normally with a mottled effect. Flint enamel is similar to brown Rockingham but with the addition of flecks, spots, or streaks of color, usually blues, greens, yellows, and oranges.

A green flint enamel glaze decorates the surface of the doe and the stag. Bennington produced the recumbent doe-and-stag form in limited numbers, and consequently very few examples exist today.