Technique: (1) Incising through wet slip into paste with pointed tool for
linear effects. (2) Excising of small areas to reveal paste and to
strengthen tonal qualities of designs. (3) Incising with multiple-pointed
tools having three to five points, to draw multiple-lined stripes. (4)
Stippling with same tools.
Motifs: The motifs are varied and never occur in any one combination more
than once. There are two general categories of design, geometric and
floral, although in some cases these are joined in the same specimen.
In the geometric category, the majority of plate rims are decorated with
hastily drawn spirals and _guilloches_. The centers may have circles
within squares, circles enclosing compass-drawn petals, circles within a
series of swags embellished with lines. Triple-lined chevrons decorate the
border of one plate. A chamber pot is decorated with diagonal stripes of
multiple lines, between which wavy lines are punctuated by small excised
rectangles. Some cups, jugs, and the candlestick are simply decorated with
vertical stripes, between which are wavy lines, stippling, and excised
blocks.
The floral category includes elaborate and intricate stylized floral and
vine motifs: tulips, sunflowers, leaves, tendrils, hearts, four-petaled
flowers. One plate (fig. 11) combines the geometric feeling of the first
category with the floral qualities of the second in its swag-and-tassel
rim and swagged band, which encloses a sunflower springing from a stalk
between two leaves.
The design motifs are unique in comparison with those found on other
English pottery of the 17th century. The geometrical patterns and spiral
ornaments, which also occur in Hispanic majolica, have a Moorish flavor.
Christian symbols--especially tulips, sunflowers, and hearts--are
recurrent, as they are on contemporary West-of-England furniture, pewter,
and embroidery and on the carved chests, and crewel work of Puritan New
England. There is considerable reason to believe that there was a
connection between North Devon sgraffito-ware manufacture and design on
the one hand and the influx of Huguenot and Netherlands Protestant
artisans into southern and southwestern England on the other. Low Country
immigrant potters were responsible for two other ceramic innovations
elsewhere in England--stoneware and majolica.
[Illustration: FIGURE 22.--Slip-coated porringers and drinking bowl
(center). Colonial National Historical Park.]
[Illustration: FIGURE 23.--North Devon gravel-tempered pan with typical
terra cotta paste and characteristic 18th-century flattened rim, slightly
undercut on the interior. This pan, measuring 13-1/4 inches in diameter
and 4-3/8 inches high, was found at the Coke-Garrett house site in
Williamsburg, Virginia, in a context attributed to the period about
1740-1760. Colonial Williamsburg, Inc. (_Colonial Williamsburg photo
59-DW-703-44._)]