SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS, 1780-1800

Based on its beehive shape, this fire bucket dates to the late eighteenth century and painted in 1810, the year that the Enterprise Fire Club was founded in Salem. The records of this company, dating from 1810 to 1870, are in the collections of the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum. Other buckets displaying the same company name and similar imagery include an example owned by Salem cabinetmaker Thomas Needham (1779-1858) and a pair owned by John Nichols. William Potter, the owner of this bucket, would have been one of the company's original 33 subscribers and may be the individual of the same name who died in Hamilton, just north of Salem, in 1814 (Anthony N.B. Garvan and Carol A. Wojtowicz, Catalogue of The Green Tree Collection (Philadelphia, 1977), pp. 114-115, 1975-B-8 and Skinner, Boston, 7 March 2010, lot 353).