The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 294 • Kate Clark
however, can also provide a source
of information for how people
lived. Eighteenth-and nineteenthcentury
ceramics are often the
subject of research by collectors
and art historians, anxious to
establish firm attribu-tions for
individual pieces. The
archaeological study of ceramics
for the industrial period, however,
has concentrated much more on
methods of production (Baker
1991) (Figure 16.9) —there have,
for example, been many excavations
of kilns in major ceramicproducing
areas such as Stoke-on-
Trent in the Midlands. Only
recently have traditional excavation
reports begun to deal seriously with
post eighteenth-century ceramics
(Figure 16.10).
The production of tin-glazed
wares, stonewares and domestic
earthenwares was established in
Britain by the end of the seventeenth
century (Draper 1984). Pottery
production was transformed,
however, in the latter half of the
eighteenth century when the new
fashions for drinking tea, coffee and
chocolate were being initially
satisfied by the importation of blue
and white porcelains from China.
Local manufacturers were desperate
Figure 16.9 Kilns at Gladstone Pottery Museum, Stoke-on-Trent. to recreate these, and started making
Source: Kate Clark
white stonewares with incised blue
decoration. Firms in Worcester, and
later at Caughley and Coalport in Shropshire, in Liverpool and in Nantgarw, Gwent, experimented
with, and finally succeeded in making, hard and soft paste porcelains in Britain, applying handpainted
and later transfer-printed blue designs in imitation of the Chinese wares. These were,
however, specialist wares. The first successful mass production of ceramics was undertaken by
Josiah Wedgwood, who developed and patented a cream coloured earthenware that was cheap to
produce, and could be coloured. ‘Queensware’, as it was called, was successfully marketed
throughout Britain, and the predominance of creamwares in archaeological assemblages
throughout the parts of the world with which Britain had trading contacts is particularly notable.