North Italian Marbled Slipware (16th to 17th century) A low-fired red-bodied earthenware decorated with a marbled slip of white and red or polychrome brown, orange, and green.

Material – Earthenware

Place of Origin – Arno River, northern Italy

Utilitarian wares produced in northern Italy made from red-firing alluvial clays by potters along the Arno River between Pisa and Montalupo. The fine red paste is often soft and chalky in texture. Bowls are the most common vessel forms identified on early colonial sites in North America. Other vessel forms include flatware dishes and costrels, a tall, pear-shaped flask with two loop handles along each side for attaching a braided cord handle. The marbled slip was created by swirling two or more colored slips on the surface of the vessel. Slip decorated wares are either white and red or a polychrome of brown, orange, and green.[i]

Examples of North Italian wares have been found on archaeological sites in Virginia from the second quarter of the seventeenth century. The presence of these wares in North America has been attributed to Dutch transatlantic trade.[ii] These wares have been roughly dated to 1610-1660[iii], but they have been recovered from later colonial contexts in Charleston, SC. Fragments of North Italian marbled slipware costrels were recovered at from c.1670-1690s contexts at Charles Towne Landing during Stan South’s 1968-69 excavations.[iv] These fragments appear to be from a single vessel and subsequent excavations at c.1670 Charles Towne have not found any additional examples. Costrel fragments were also recovered from mid-18th century contexts related to an urban market (c.1739-1760) in downtown, Charleston, SC.[v]

[i] Ivor Noel Hume, A Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America (Vintage Books, New York, NY, 1991), 77,140; Beverly Straube, “European Ceramics in the New World: The Jamestown Example”. In Ceramics in America, edited by Robert Hunter (Chipstone Foundation, Milwaukee, WI 2001), 59.

[ii] Straube, European Ceramics, 64; Charlotte Wilcoxen, Dutch Trade and Ceramics in America in the Seventeenth Century (Albany Institute of History & Art, Albany, NY, 1987), 77.

[iii] Noel Hume, A Guide to Artifacts, 77.

[iv] Stanley South, Archaeological Pathways to Historic Site Development (Kluwer Academic, New York, NY 2002), 91-92.

[v] Martha A. Zierden and Elizabeth J. Reitz, Archaeology at City Hall: Charleston’s Colonial Beef Market (The Charleston Museum, Charleston, SC, 2005), 74. Associated with the 1739-1760 era contexts for the Beef Market.