Redware in Portsmouth
Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Justin Thomas, collector, researcher and writer about American utilitarian pottery production from the seventeenth through the early twentieth century will share his research on redware throughout the Piscataqua region.

European household pottery began to arrive in the Portsmouth, New Hampshire area in the early seventeenth century, closely following the initial English settlement in 1630, which was driven by trade in fish, fur, and timber. In the first-half of the eighteenth century domestic red earthenware was imported and manufactured in Portsmouth. Archaeological and documented evidence reveals red earthenware made in Charlestown, Massachusetts was shipped to Portsmouth before 1755, some of which was purchased by Samuel Marshall (d. 1749), a local potter who operated on land owned today by Strawbery Banke. Marshall also had at least one enslaved African who worked at his pottery business. 

Nonetheless, this import system likely continued until Charlestown's industry was destroyed at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775. After the American Revolution, a potter named Winthrop Bennett (1757-1826) was active, although his business was acquired in the 1790s by Joseph Dodge (1776-1849). Joseph's house and likely his kiln was located on Dearborn Street in Exeter.  Portsmouth and surrounding towns sustained red earthenware businesses in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, while also absorbing some red earthenware imported from other coastal parts of New England.