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
Gravel-tempered ware apparently was esteemed as a kitchen ware, much as is
the modern "ovenware" or Pyrex in the contemporary home. Since
gravel-tempered ovens were widely used in the West of England, they were
accepted by settlers in America, especially where built-in brick ovens
were lacking.
Unlike those of Staffordshire or Bristol, the North Devon potteries failed
to develop new techniques or to change with shifts in taste. The delftware
of London and Bristol and the yellow wares of Bristol and Staffordshire
became preferable to the soft and imperfect sgraffito ware. In the same
way, the kitchen ware of Staffordshire and the adequate red-wares of
American potters made obsolete the heavy, ugly, and incomparably crude
gravel-tempered ware, while American bricklayers, having adopted the
custom of building brick ovens into fireplaces, outmoded the portable
ovens from North Devon after 1700. Any chance of a renaissance of North
Devon's potteries was killed by the blockading of its ports in the
mid-18th century. From then on the potteries continued traditionally,
their markets gradually shrinking at home in the face of modern production
elsewhere. Today, only Brannan's Litchdon Street Pottery in Barnstaple has
survived.
OTHER REFERENCES CONSULTED
BEMROSE, GEOFFREY, _Nineteenth-Century English Pottery and Porcelain_, New
York, n.d. (about 1952).
BLACKER, J. F., _Nineteenth-Century English Ceramic Art_, London, 1911.
CHAFFERS, WILLIAM, _Marks and Monograms on Pottery and Porcelain_, 14th
issue, London, 1932.
GRIBBLE, JOSEPH B., _Memorials of Barnstaple_, Barnstaple, 1830.
HAGGAR, REGINALD, _English Country Pottery_, London, 1950.
HONEY, W. B., _European Ceramic Art from the end of the Middle Ages to
about 1815_, London, n.d. (about 1952).
MANKOWITZ, WOLF, AND HAGGAR, REGINALD G., _The Concise Encyclopedia of
English Pottery and Porcelain_, London, 1957.
METEYARD, ELIZA, _The Life of Josiah Wedgwood_, London, 1865.
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1960
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
Office, Washington 25, D.C. Price 35 cents.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Worth Bailey, "Concerning Jamestown Pottery--Its Past and Present,"
_Ceramic Age_, October 1939, pp. 101-104.
[2] H. C. Forman, _Jamestown and Saint Mary's_, Baltimore, 1938, p. 133.
[3] Worth Bailey, "A Jamestown Baking Oven of the Seventeenth Century,"
_William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine_, 1937, ser. 2,
vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 496-500.
[4] John Watkins, _An Essay Towards a History of Bideford in the County of
Devon_, Exeter, 1792, p. 56.
[5] _Ibid._, pp. 65, 67-68.
[6] _Ibid._, p. 70.
[7] Port Book, Barnstaple, 1620, Public Record Office, London (hereinafter
referred to as _Port Book_), E 190/947.
[8] _Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_, 1911, vol. 19, p. 31.
[9] _Ibid._, quoting Sainsbury Abstracts, p. 184.
[10] _Virginia Magazine of History and Biography_, 1901, vol. 9, pp.
257-258.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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