Creampot 1862 - 1863

This creampot was made by Wood and Hughes, sometime in the second half of the 19th century. We might think of this object as an example of industrialization, which saw a huge increase in specialized manufacturing in the United States. Consider the scene depicted on the pot: a craftsman at work. This visual code references older models of production, where goods were made in small workshops or by individual artisans. By the time this creampot was made, such workshops were giving way to factories. Who, then, was the intended audience for such an object? Middle-class consumers would have been more and more removed from these earlier modes of production, and perhaps nostalgic for a time when manufacturing was less centralized and impersonal. As art historians, we need to be alive to the ways images speak to the social and cultural anxieties of their time. We might look to period newspapers, magazines, and advertisements to better understand the creampot’s original context.