When Hugh C. Robertson, a fifth-generation Scottish potter, visited the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876, he was intrigued by Chinese sang de boeuf (oxblood or red glazed) pottery fired with a craquelure (crackle pattern) surface. Twenty years after working at his family’s Chelsea Pottery (1867 – 1895) in Massachusetts, he opened Dedham Pottery, which became famous for high-fire arts-and-crafts stoneware with craquelure glazes and cobalt-blue designs. The firm’s rabbit and brussels sprouts pattern was best known, but Dedham produced more than 50 patterns, including this rare crab.