North Devon Pottery and Its Export to America in the 17th CenturyWatkins, C. Malcolm
History
North Devon Pottery and Its Export to America in the 17th Century
Watkins, C. Malcolm
Pottery -- Atlantic States; Pottery -- England -- Devon
However, certain kinds of sgraffito ware continued to be made without
apparent interruption until early in the present century. Instead of
useful tableware, decorated with symbols and motifs characteristic of
17th-century English folk ornament, we find after 1700 only presentation
pieces, particularly in the form of large harvest jugs. The harvest jugs
were made for annual harvest celebrations, when they were passed around by
the farmers among their field hands in a folk ritual observed at the end
of harvest.[54] Unlike the sgraffito tablewares, where style and taste
were deciding factors in their survival, these special jugs were intended
to be used only in annual ceremonies. Thus they were carefully preserved
and passed on from generation to generation, with a higher chance for
survival than that which the sgraffito tablewares enjoyed.
The style of the harvest jugs is in sharp contrast to that of the
tablewares, the jugs having been decorated in a pagan profusion of
fertility and prosperity symbols, mixed sometimes with pictorial and
inscriptive allusions to the sea, particularly on jugs ascribed to
Bideford. The oldest dated examples embody characteristics of design and
techniques that relate them unmistakably to the tablewares, while later
specimens made throughout the 18th and 19th centuries show an increasing
divergence from the 17th-century style. An especially elaborate piece was
made for display at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in the Crystal
Palace.[55]
Less complicated pieces, with a minimum of incising, were made for
ordinary use, as were plain pieces whose surfaces were covered with slip
without decoration. The trailing and splashing of slip designs on the body
of the ware, practiced in Staffordshire and many of our colonial
potteries, apparently was not followed in North Devon.[56]
Sites Yielding North Devon Types
Excepting the Bowne House oven and a 1698 jug (see p. 45), no example of
North Devon pottery used in America is known to have survived above
ground. Archeological evidence, however, provides a sufficient record of
North Devon wares and the tastes and customs they reflected. Following are
descriptions of the principal sites in which these wares were found.
JAMESTOWN, VIRGINIA: MAY-HARTWELL SITE.
The site of Jamestown, first permanent English settlement in North
America, has been excavated at intervals by the National Park Service. The
early excavations were under the supervision of several archeological
technicians directing Civilian Conservation Corps crews. In September
1936, J. C. Harrington became supervising archeologist of the project, and
until World War II he continued the work as funds permitted. Except for
the privately sponsored excavation of the Jamestown glasshouse site by
Harrington in 1947, no extensive archeological work was thereafter
undertaken until 1954, when John L. Cotter was appointed chief
archeologist. Thorough exploration of Jamestown was his responsibility
until 1956.[57]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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