Reddit reviews Slipware in the Collection of the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery

>Im just amazed you could get so much from one shard!

I've looked at a lot of this stuff, most of it in smaller pieces than that. I worked cataloging ceramics finds for an excavation in 2011 that covered a range of about 1730-1840; the job is pretty much pull as much information from little fragments as you can as quickly and accurately as possible. You get to a point where you can pull the basic info out pretty quickly, and Pearlware is one of the ones I ran into a fair amount of.

>could you also provide the coat of arms you think its a part of?

It's a variation of this crest. Someone who knows their English heraldry might be able to get an exact variation, but it's also a fair chance that the potter was copying a lower crest, or missed a bit, or didn't have a good image to copy from. I actually recognize it from doing the decorating on these, which are reproductions of a 1741 sgraffito harvest jug in the Potteries Museum in Stoke-On-Trent. Original partly pictured on cover here; can't find a photo of the damn thing online and don't have permission to post mine.


>do you mind me asking what specifically makes you so sure of the dating and everything?

The short answer is experience. The long answer:

I'm fairly sure it's Pearlware because of the craquelure pattern, color and design. Creamware doesn't usually have that crazing and is slightly yellow tinted. It could be Whiteware, but is a little bit blue-grey tinted (which would indicate for Pearlware). Also Whiteware can be a bit later, at which point it would be far less likely to find a British royal crest on a pot in the US.

I'm fairly sure it's hand painted because of the uneven application of the design. It could be an exceptionally poor and badly fired transfer print (which would push the date later), but I don't think so.

The date range is pretty standard. Pearlware is usually somewhere 1780-1840. Pottery styles change, so it's pretty easy to date things based on that. I've narrowed to 1780-1820 because after about 1820 printed design is dominant rather than handpainted. To be honest I could probably call it 1780-1800 based on the design, but without being a bit more certain of that I'd rather keep to the wide range.

Some of this stuff is amazingly datable. If you have a bit of the rim, there are common types of shell-edge Pearlware that you can date within 5 or 10 years. The exact molding of the rim changes shape, and the color gets changed. If I had the books on me (and they're several thousand miles away from me at the moment, so I can't) I could get a date within 10 years for a piece of shell-edge rim a lot smaller than this.

It's partly luck - this piece happens to have a reasonably identifiable design - and partly having done this a lot and having looked through a load of archaeological literature on the subject.


Edit: It's worth noting that Pearlware, Creamware, and Whiteware are archaeological terms, not ceramics terms. Each category encompasses a certain level of variation and a number of discrete styles for the simple reason that it's pretty rare to be able to further differentiate based only on the tiny sherds that are typically recovered.