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
Figure 1.—North Devon sgraffito cup, deep dish, and jugrestored from fragments excavated from fill under brick drain atMay-Hartwell site, Jamestown, Virginia. The drain was laid between 1689and 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 Jamestownand Plymouth indicate that the seaboard colonists of the 17th centuryenjoyed a higher degree of comfort and more esthetic furnishings thanheretofore believed. In addition, these findings have given us muchnew information about the interplay of trade and culture between thecolonists and their mother country.
This article represents the first work in the author’s long-rangestudy of ceramics used by the English colonists in America.
The Author: C. Malcolm Watkins is curator of cultural history, UnitedStates National Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
Pottery sherds found archeologically in colonial sites serve a multiplepurpose. They help to date the sites; they reflect cultural and economiclevels 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 in1935 of two distinct but unidentified pottery types in the excavationsconducted by the National Park Service at Jamestown, Virginia, and laterelsewhere along the eastern seaboard. One type was an elaborate andstriking yellow sgraffito ware, the other a coarse utilitarian kitchenware whose red paste was heavily tempered with a gross water-worn gravelor “grit.” Included in the latter class were the components of largeearthen baking ovens. Among the literally hundreds of thousands of sherdsuncovered at Jamestown between 1935 and 1956, these types occurred withrelatively high incidence. For a long time no relationship between themwas noted, yet their histories have proved to be of one fabric, reflectingthe activities of a 17th-century English potterymaking center ofunsuspected magnitude.
The sgraffito pottery is a red earthenware, coated with a white slipthrough which designs have been incised. An amber lead glaze imparts agolden yellow to the slip-covered portions and a brownish amber to theexposed red paste. The gravel-tempered ware is made of a similarred-burning clay and is remarkable for its lack of refinement, for thepebbly texture caused by protruding bits of gravel, and for the crude andcareless manner in which the heavy amber glaze was applied to interiorsurfaces. Once seen, it is instantly recognizable and entir