(exported 16th century- late 18th century)

Material – Earthenware, redware

Place of Origin – North Devon, England

Lead glazed coarse earthenwares produced in the North Devon region of South West England mainly in the towns of Barnstaple and Bideford.[i] Located along the Bristol Channel their ceramic wares became a major export to the English colonies along the eastern United States between 1635 and the late 18th century.[ii] The earliest examples in North America were found at Jamestown, Virginia (c.1610) and Martin’s Hundred, Virginia (c.1622), but they aren’t common until the second half of the 17th century.[iii] The 1660/1663 Navigation Acts restricted direct foreign imports to the English colonies and dictated that all foreign goods had to first pass through England and colonists could only trade with English vessels.[iv] The Bideford port was a main entrepot for goods being exported to the English colonies which the North Devon potters took advantage of. North Devon wares were favored durable heat-resistant wares for use in kitchens and dairies. North Devon wares reached their height of popularity in the 1680s.[v]

As consumers began to favor more refined wares the ceramic industry in North Devon had a long slow decline that began in the early seventeenth century. Bideford merchants and shipowners suffered losses due to wars, raids, and pirates and increasingly found it difficult to compete with larger ports like Liverpool and Staffordshire. Local potters were not able to adapt to the changing consumer demands for more refined wares. As a result, North Devon wares become increasingly less common on eighteenth century sites.[vi] Excavations in downtown Charleston, South Carolina have shown that North Devon wares continued to be available in the local markets until the late 18th century but in low quantities that comprised 5% or less of the ceramics recovered.[vii] We see a similar pattern in the seventeenth century contexts associated with Charles Towne with North Devon making up 5% or less of the c.1670 to 1690s ceramic assemblage. With the onset of the American Revolutionary War, American consumers boycott British trade goods and North Devon ceramics fall out of favor in American markets.

The body of North Devon ceramic wares were produced using pure red clays mined in Fremington from deposits that were formed from middle Pleistocene era glacial lake sediments. The lead glaze was produced from locally mined lead ore. The glaze color of North Devon wares ranges from green, yellow, and brown hues.[viii] These wheel-thrown redware vessels were a common utilitarian ware found on seventeenth century sites in America that were produced in a few different varieties – below are descriptions of the varieties that have been identified in the c.1670 Charles Towne artifact assemblage.

Sgraffito (1622-1710, most common after 1650) A lead glazed fine red-bodied earthenware that has a white clay slip that bold geometric and floral decorations were scratched into prior to applying a lead glaze. When the vessel is fired the scratched design appears brown against the yellow glaze. This North Devon variety does not have any added temper or the grey core.

Sgraffito wares have a fine red clay body that does not have any added temper. Potters used a white ball clay to create a white clay slip that was applied to the redware paste before the vessel was fired. Bold decorations were scratched through the white clay slip and into the red clay body. Decorations had to be carved quickly before the clays fully dried. Geometric or floral designs were common decorative motifs. After the sgraffito decoration was applied the vessel it received its first biscuit, or low-temperature unglazed firing, which helps make the vessel more porous and makes the glaze adhere more easily. Following the initial firing, a clear lead glaze was applied and the vessel was fired again at a higher temperature. After the final glost firing, the glaze appears yellow where the white slip remains and brown where the red clay body is exposed from the carved designs.[ix] The use of double firing methods on their slipped wares is a distinguishing mark of the North Devon potters as other English slip decorated wares are only fired once. Double-firing was a common technique used in the Netherlands and Northern France and scholars have speculated that the North Devon potters were influenced by them either through imitation or possibly from immigrated potters. However, no supporting evidence has been found for the source of the unique double firing technique used by the North Devon potters.[x]

slip – As a decoration, a slip is potters clay that is mixed with water and strained to form a smooth, runny liquid mixture that is applied to a vessels surface as a thin coating. Slips can be used to change the color of a glaze or as decoration.[xi] In North Devon wares slips were applied as a wash or as trailed lines and dots.

The only identified Sgraffito vessel form in the c.1670 Charles Towne assemblage is a small deep bowl with a horizontal loop handle on the rim. The Charles Towne bowl has vertical combed and stippled lines on the interior. Similar bowls were found in the May-Hartwell Collection, recovered from a discarded broken shipment likely dating to 1673-1682 on a property located outside of Jamestown, Virginia.[xii]

North Devon gravel tempered (1610-1775, most common after 1640) A utilitarian lead glazed redware with a very coarse gravel temper and gray core. The greenish glaze ranges between apple and light brown hues. Vessels often have thick rounded rims.

This variety is distinguished by the inclusion of a very coarse water-worn quartz and feldsparthic gravel temper to the red clay body. The gravel was collected from the water-worn deposits along the fresh-water banks of the Torridge and Taw Rivers.[xiii] The addition of the gravel would have served a useful purpose for the potters as well as the consumers. The gravel temper added bulk to the fine red clays helping them to dry more evenly, and could be fired at lower temperatures and for a shorter period of time. The gravel also produced wares that were more durable and more heat-resistant making them better suited for cooking in a hearth and cooking flambé.[xiv]

The exterior of vessels are often left unglazed and the interior glaze tends to be sloppily applied and drips and spilling are common. Glaze color ranges from an apple-green, a yellow-green with orange splotches, light brown, and overfired wares have a dark olive-amber hue. Common vessel forms include large flat-bottomed pans, bowls, pipkins, cooking pots, storage jars, and jugs. Vessels tend to have thick, heavy rims that are either rounded or flattened. Applied clay slips are often added below the rim on the exterior of the vessel to provide additional reinforcement against breakages from heavy-use.[xv]

Earthenware pans were seldom used for cooking and the main market for North Devon wares was for dairying with the majority of vessels being cream or milk pans. Larger bowls and pans may have also been used for salting butter.[xvi] The North Devon gravel tempered rim forms recovered in the seventeenth century contexts at Charles Towne are most often for plates, platters, or bowls that could have been used for serving foods, salting butter, and dairying.

North Devon gravel free (1635-1650) A utilitarian lead glazed redware with a gray core that lacks the very coarse gravel temper. Tall jars are the most common vessel form.

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[i] David Barker, Slipware (Shire Publications, Ltd., 2010), 10; David Barker and Steve Crompton, Slipware in the Collections of the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery (A&C Black Publishers Limited, London, UK 2007), 12; Ronald G. Cooper, English Slipware Dishes 1650-1850 (Transatlantic Arts Inc., New York, NY, 1968), 20-21; Alison Grant, North Devon Pottery; The Seventeenth Century (University of Exeter, A. Wheaton & Co. Ltd., Exeter, UK, 1983), 35

[ii] Cooper, English Slipware Dishes, 20-21; Ivor Noel Hume, A Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America (Vintage Books, New York, NY 1991), 104; C. Malcolm Watkins, North Devon Pottery and its Export to America in the 17###sup/sup### Century (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1960), 22-24,58-59.

[iii] Merry Abbitt Outlaw, “Scratched in Clay: Seventeenth-Century North Devon Slipware at Jamestown, Virginia”. In Ceramics in America, edited by Robert Hunter (Chipstone Foundation, Milwaukee, WI, 2002), 21.

[iv] Leo Hollis, London Rising: The Men Who Made Modern London (Walker & Company, New York, NY, 2008), 188-189; Christian J. Koot, Empire on the Periphery: British Colonists, Anglo-Dutch Trade, and the Development of the British Atlantic, 1621-1713 (New York University Press, New York, NY, 2011), 90-91.

[v] Grant, North Devon Pottery, 131-132.

[vi] Barker, Slipware, 10-11; Jo Draper, Post-Medieval Pottery 1650-1800 (Shire Publications Ltd, Buckinghamshire, UK, 2001), 22-23; Grant, North Devon Pottery, 132-134.

[vii] Martha A. Zierden and Elizabeth J. Reitz, Archaeology at City Hall: Charleston’s Colonial Beef Market (The Charleston Museum, Charleston, SC, 2005), 68,74,79,92-93.

[viii] Grant, North Devon Pottery, 35,41.

[ix] Grant, North Devon Pottery, 37; Outlaw, “Scratched in Clay”, 17-21.

[x] Barker, Slipware, 10; Leslie B. Grigsby, English Slip Decorated Earthenware at Williamsburg (The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, VA, 1993), 28.

[xi] Prudence M. Rice, Pottery Analysis: A Sourcebook (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1987),149-150.

[xii] Outlaw, “Scratched in Clay”, 22,32-33.

[xiii] Cooper, English Slipware Dishes, 21-22; Grant, North Devon Pottery, 40; Watkins, North Devon Pottery and its Export, 48.

[xiv] Grant, North Devon Pottery, :40,53.

[xv] Noel Hume, A Guide to Artifacts, 133; Outlaw, “Scratched in Clay” 20; Watkins, North Devon Pottery and its Export, 48.

[xvi] Grant, North Devon Pottery, 54.