_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.
The sgraffito pottery is a red earthenware, coated with a white slip
through which designs have been incised. An amber lead glaze imparts a
golden yellow to the slip-covered portions and a brownish amber to the
exposed red paste. The gravel-tempered ware is made of a similar
red-burning clay and is remarkable for its lack of refinement, for the
pebbly texture caused by protruding bits of gravel, and for the crude and
careless manner in which the heavy amber glaze was applied to interior
surfaces. Once seen, it is instantly recognizable and entirely distinct
from other known types of English or continental pottery. A complete oven
(fig. 10), now restored at Jamestown, is of similar paste and quality of
temper. It has a roughly oval beehive shape with a trapezoidal framed
opening in which a pottery door fits snugly.
[Illustration: FIGURE 2.--Sketch of sherd of sgraffito-ware dish, dating
about 1670, that was found during excavations of C. H. Brannam's pottery
in Barnstaple. (_Sketch by Mrs. Constance Christian, from photo._)]
Following the initial discoveries at Jamestown there was considerable
speculation about these two types. Worth Bailey, then museum technician at
Jamestown, was the first to recognize the source of the sgraffito ware as
"Devonshire."[1] Henry Chandlee Forman, asserting that such ware was
"undoubtedly made in England," felt that it "derives its inspiration from
Majolica ware ... especially that of the early Renaissance period from
Faenza."[2]
Bailey also noted that the oven and the gravel-tempered utensils were made
of identical clay and temper. However, in an attempt to prove that
earthenware was produced locally, he assumed, perhaps because of their
crudeness, that the utensils were made at Jamestown. This led him to
conjecture that the oven, having similar ceramic qualities, was also a
local product. He felt in support of this that it was doubtful "so fragile
an object could have survived a perilous sea voyage."[3]
Since these opinions were expressed, much further archeological work in
colonial sites has revealed widespread distribution of the two types.
Bailey himself noted that a pottery oven is intact and in place in the
John Bowne House in Flushing, Long Island. A fragment of another pottery
oven recently has been identified among the artifacts excavated by Sidney
Strickland from the site of the John Howland House, near Plymouth,
Massachusetts; and gravel-tempered utensil sherds have occurred in many
sites. The sgraffito ware has been unearthed in Virginia, Maryland, and
Massachusetts.
Such a wide distribution of either type implies a productive European
source for each, rather than a local American kiln in a struggling
colonial settlement like Jamestown. Bailey's attribution of the sgraffito
ware to Devonshire was confirmed in 1950 when J. C. Harrington,
archeologist of the National Park Service, came upon certain evidence at
Barnstaple in North Devon, England. This evidence was found in the form of
sherds exhibited in a display window of C. H. Brannam's Barnstaple Pottery
that were uncovered during excavation work on the premises. These are
unmistakably related in technique and design to the American examples. A
label under a fragment of a large deep dish (fig. 2) in the display is
inscribed: "Piece of dish found in site of pottery. In sgraffiato. About
1670." This clue opened the way to the investigation pursued here, the
results of which relate the sgraffito ware, the gravel-tempered ware, and
the ovens to the North Devon towns and to a busy commerce in earthenware
between Barnstaple, Bideford, and the New World.
This study, conducted at first hand only on the American side of the
Atlantic, is admittedly incomplete. Later, it is planned to consider sherd
collections in England, comparative types of sgraffito wares, and possible
influences and sources of techniques and designs. For the present, it is
felt the immediate evidence is sufficient to warrant the conclusions drawn
here.
[Illustration: FIGURE 3.--Map of the area around Bideford and Barnstaple.
Reproduced from J. B. Gribble, _Memorials of Barnstaple_, 1830.]
The author is under special obligation to J. C. Harrington, chief of
interpretation, Region I, National Park Service, who discovered the North
Devon wares and whose warm encouragement led to this paper. Also, the
author is greatly indebted to the following for their help and
cooperation: E. Stanley Abbott, superintendent, J. Paul Hudson, curator,
and Charles Hatch, chief of interpretation, Colonial National Historical
Park; Worth Bailey, Historic American Buildings Survey; Robert A. Elder,
Jr., assistant curator, division of ethnology, U.S. National Museum; Miss
Margaret Franklin of London; Henry Hornblower II and Charles Strickland of
Plimoth Plantation, Inc.; Ivor Noel Hume, chief archeologist, Colonial
Williamsburg, Inc.; Miss Mildred E. Jenkinson, librarian and curator,
Borough of Bideford Library and Museum; Frederick H. Norton, professor of
ceramics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Mrs. Edwin M. Snell
of Washington.