Ceramics

The Pennsylvania Dutch were virtually the only people in America in Colonial days who had a strong, imaginative feeling for color and design; for creative art in their households, and even on such earthy objects as their barns, fences, wagons and weather-vanes. Our knowledge of Pennsylvania-Dutch pottery is based on museums, publications, and artifacts. Southeastern Pennsylvania has much red shale and red clay giving the Dutch potters their opportunity, very soon after they had settled …

…then rolled with a rolling pin until they were smooth and to a particular thickness (Powell Pennsylvania German Pottery Tools & Processes 20). The tulip motif appears positively everywhere in Dutch art--even on the barn designs and on the walls. Of course the sgraffito are stunning with them. The Pennsylvania-Dutch tulip design has been found on about 35 different objects of decoration, beginning with barn designs, and continuing on to pottery (Cooper Ten Thousand Years of Pottery 214-225).