Produced by Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. North Devon Pottery and its Export to America in the 17th Century _by C. Malcolm Watkins_ Paper 13, pages 17-59, from CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM Bulletin 225 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION · WASHINGTON, D.C., 1960 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY: PAPER 13 NORTH DEVON POTTERY AND ITS EXPORT TO AMERICA IN THE 17TH CENTURY _C. Malcolm Watkins_ [Illustration: FIGURE 1.--North Devon sgraffito cup, deep dish, and jug restored from fragments excavated from fill under brick drain at May-Hartwell site, Jamestown, Virginia. The drain was laid between 1689 and 1695. Colonial National Historical Park.] By C. Malcolm Watkins NORTH DEVON POTTERY AND ITS EXPORT TO AMERICA IN THE 17th CENTURY _Recent excavations of ceramics at historic sites such as Jamestown and Plymouth indicate that the seaboard colonists of the 17th century enjoyed a higher degree of comfort and more esthetic furnishings than heretofore believed. In addition, these findings have given us much new information about the interplay of trade and culture between the colonists and their mother country._ _This article represents the first work in the author's long-range study of ceramics used by the English colonists in America._ THE AUTHOR: _C. Malcolm Watkins is curator of cultural history, United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution._ Pottery sherds found archeologically in colonial sites serve a multiple purpose. They help to date the sites; they reflect cultural and economic levels in the areas of their use; and they throw light on manufacture, trade, and distribution. Satisfying instances of these uses were revealed with the discovery in 1935 of two distinct but unidentified pottery types in the excavations conducted by the National Park Service at Jamestown, Virginia, and later elsewhere along the eastern seaboard. One type was an elaborate and striking yellow sgraffito ware, the other a coarse utilitarian kitchen ware whose red paste was heavily tempered with a gross water-worn gravel or "grit." Included in the latter class were the components of large earthen baking ovens. Among the literally hundreds of thousands of sherds uncovered at Jamestown between 1935 and 1956, these types occurred with relatively high incidence. For a long time no relationship between them was noted, yet their histories have proved to be of one fabric, reflecting the activities of a 17th-century English potterymaking center of unsuspected magnitude.