Part 3 (2/2)

Cultural material is predominantly from about 1675.

FLUs.h.i.+NG, LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK: THE JOHN BOWNE HOUSE.

The John Bowne House is a historic house museum at Bowne Street and Fox Lane, Flus.h.i.+ng, Long Island, maintained by the Bowne House Historical Society. Bowne was a Quaker from Derbys.h.i.+re, who built his house in 1661.

A North Devon oven is still in place, with its opening at the back of the fireplace.

YORKTOWN, VIRGINIA.

The National Park Service has excavated at various locations in Yorktown, both in the neighboring battlefield sites and the town itself. Yorktown, like Marlborough, was established by the Act for Ports in 1691. In several of the areas excavated, occasional sherds of North Devon gravel-tempered ware were found. In refuse behind the site of the Swan Tavern, opened as an inn in 1722 but probably occupied earlier, a single large fragment of a 15-inch sgraffito platter was discovered. No other pieces of this type were found, a.s.sociated artifacts having been predominantly from the 18th century.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGURE 19.--Gravel-tempered bowl (top) and pipkins from Jamestown. Colonial National Historical Park.]

Descriptions of Types

NORTH DEVON SGRAFFITO WARE

Sites: Jamestown, Kecoughtan, Green Spring, John Was.h.i.+ngton House, Kent Island, Yorktown, Joseph Howland House.

PASTE

Manufacture: Wheel-turned, with templates used to shape collars of jugs and to shape edges and sometimes ridges where plate rims join bezels.

Temper: Fine, almost microscopic, water-worn sand particles.

Texture: Fine, smooth, well-mixed, sharp, regular cleavage.

Color: Dull pinkish red, with gray core usual.

Firing: Two firings, one before glazing and one after. Usually incomplete oxidation, shown by gray core. A few specimens have surface breaks or flakings incurred in the firing and most show warping (suggesting that ”rejects,” unsalable in England, were sent to the colonists, who had no recourse but to accept them).

SURFACES

Treatment: Inner surfaces of plates and bowls and outer surfaces of jugs, cups, mugs, chamber pots, and other utensils viewed on the exteriors are coated with white kaolin slip. Designs are scratched through the slip while wet and into the surface of the paste, exposing the latter.

Undersides of plates and chargers are often sc.r.a.ped to make irregular flat areas of surface. Slip-covered portions are coated with amber glaze by sifting on powdered galena (lead sulphide). Containers which are slipped externally are glazed externally and internally. Slip and glaze do not cover lower portions of jugs, but run down unevenly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGURE 20.--Gravel-tempered chafing dish from Jamestown.

Colonial National Historical Park. (_Smithsonian photo 43104._)]

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