Table services were, of course, only one example of the use of ceramic wares in Canadian homes. Another was the toilet service for the bedroom. Washstands, with their accompanying basins and ewers, were necessary bedroom furnishings in farm and village houses throughout the period (illustration 20). Well into the Victorian days, many urban houses were without running water or bathrooms. (In the 1860s, water was still being sold by the bucket from MontrΘal street carts, despite the existence of city waterworks.)
In poor homes or on the frontier, a tin basin in the kitchen might well serve the whole family. Makeshifts had to do. Mary FitzGibbon, author of A Trip to Manitoba, published in 1880, stayed at a primitive hotel near the United States-Manitoba border where "a yellow pudding basin and a white jug full of water" constituted the washing facilities in her bedroom. Normally, however, a proper hand basin with its matching ewer, sometimes of decorated tin (tole) but more usually having a ceramic body, stood on the washstand. The earthenware set shown here dates from the mid-1880s and was made in Scotland by J. Marshall & Co. (illustration 10) who had a well-developed trade in Canada.
This underglaze printed pattern (with colour washed over the printing) was named "Canadian Sports". The design was inspired by a set of Christmas and New Year's cards published in MontrΘal at the beginning of the 1880s. The card seen here was received in 1882 by a QuΘbec resident. Other sports, appearing first on the cards and then on earthenware, included sliding, tobogganing, snowshoeing, and lacrosse.
Courtesy: National Museum of Man, National Museums of Canada (S81-13), Private Collection
