This pitcher was manufactured by Rookwood Pottery, an American art pottery company founded in Cincinnati, Ohio. Rookwood was begun by Maria Longworth Nichols in 1880 after she was enamored of the Japanese ceramics on view at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. Nichols originally proposed to her father that they bring a Japanese pottery—“workmen...

A ghostly skeleton in a shroud, with one arm upraised, holding a burning lamp, over a dusky, shadowy background…. Are you scared yet? You need not be, for this ghoulish scene unfolds on this enchanting Rookwood Pottery jug, and not on your street. The ovoid jug was made in 1891 and is part of the...