Mottled Ware (1670-1750) A buff-bodied earthenware with a mottled and streaky brown lead glaze caused by the addition of iron or manganese to the glaze.
Material – Earthenware
Place of Origin – Staffordshire, England
Staffordshire potters began producing mottled wares in the late 17th century. This vessel style was copied in other potting centers into the mid to late 18th century. It has been recovered on archaeological sites in the American Southeast that date between c.1680 and 1780. The buff-colored paste is similar to the North Midlands Slipware. Mottled ware vessels are wheel-turned. They get their mottled or streaky brown coloring from the addition of iron or manganese oxide to the lead glaze. The most common vessel forms are tavern wares including cordoned tankards and globular mugs. The exterior base is often unglazed and the interior glaze is often thicker and darker as a result from the glaze pooling at the bottom of the vessel. Other vessel forms include cups, possets, jugs, jars, plates, bowls, chamber pots, and cooking pots.[i]
Straight-sided tankards have been recovered from seventeenth century contexts in the Charleston area. The c.1670s-1690s Charles Towne contexts in both the town commons and a brick structure on a private town lot have recovered fragments of tankards that often have deep wheel-turned horizontal cordoned ribs in bands at the base and upper third of the vessel. No other vessel forms have been identified at Charles Towne.[ii] Mottled ware was also recovered from The First Earl of Shaftesbury’s c.1674-1685 St. Giles Kussoe 12,000-acre plantation located on the Ashley River outside of the Charles Towne settlement. A tankard fragment was recovered from buildings associated with the plantation.[iii] Mottled wares have also been recovered from archaeological sites in downtown, Charleston including the c.1690-1739 early market square contexts at the Charleston Beef Market and 18th century contexts from excavations on a portion of a c.1696 defensive brick redan at South Adgers Wharf on Tradd Street. Most of the recovered vessels were from tankards, but bowls or bulbous hollow ware vessels were also identified.[iv]
[i] Prudence M. Rice, Pottery Analysis: A Sourcebook (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1987), 337-339; Peter Williams, “The Talbot Hotel Pit Group.” In Ceramics in America, Edited by Robert Hunter (Chipstone Foundation, University Press of New England, New Haven, CT), 120-127.
[ii] Andrew Agha, ”Shaftesbury’s Atlantis.” (PhD diss., University of South Carolina, 2020), 222,228; Michael J Stoner and Stanley A. South, 66-67.
[iii] Agha, “Shaftesbury’s Atlantis”, 236; Martha Zierden, “European Ceramics from the Lord Ashley Site.” In St. Giles Kussoe and “The Character of a Loyal States-man”: Historical Archaeology at Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper’s Carolina Plantation (Report prepared for Historic Charleston Foundation, Charleston, SC, 2012), 63.
[iv] Nicholas Butler, Eric Poplin, Katherine Pemberton, and Martha Zierden, Archaeology at South Adger’s Wharf: A Study of the Redan at Tradd Street, Archaeological Contributions 45 (Report prepared for the City of Charleston and Mayor Riley’s Walled City Task Force (The Charleston Museum, Charleston, SC, 2012), 57,71,109,111,113; Zierden, “European Ceramics”, 63; Martha A. Zierden and Elizabeth J. Reitz, Archaeology at City Hall: Charleston’s Colonial Beef Market (The Charleston Museum, Charleston, SC, 2005), 69.