Appearances and Aspiration: The Welches and their Sugar Bowl

As the summer internship wraps up, my final blog post features a sugar bowl that is as mysterious as it is telling. Whereas we don’t know the creator of this artifact, I noticed a pattern in which the characteristics of the bowl are borrowed and altered from other potter’s work. In capturing the changing and merging aesthetics and utilitarianism, the sugar bowl parallel the transformations the Welches underwent as they became members of the Puddle Dock community.

The vessel is in the shape of an elongated octagon with two decorative handles, a pearlware glaze, and purple transfer print design. It is mended, with some body pieces and lid missing. This piece ended up in the archaeological record after being broken and thrown away by the Welches as trash. Its disposal most likely coincides with a kitchen fire from the turn of the twentieth century. No records of the fire in newspaper, fire department, or fire society records have been located. 

In the glaze, we encounter the first instance of imitation. English potters created what they called China glaze around 1775, which attempted to imitate the bright white of Chinese porcelain by adding blue pigments to a glaze. It is identifiable by a blue tint to where the glaze pools in creases or rims. Chinese porcelain was a marker of wealth, status, and exclusivity, with pearlware being accessible for mass consumption in households free from the hefty price tag of an authentic Chinese import. However, English China glaze (or pearlware) could never pass for porcelain because English potters were working with local clays, creating thicker and less vitreous pastes.

"Infant Sports" Sugar Bowl from Zephyr by mirandaleclerc on Sketchfab

In this photogrammetric 3D model, you can manipulate the sugar bowl to zoom into breakages and see the texture of the paste.

 

 The black writing is the catalog number for this piece
of the sugar bowl, indicating the site and
from what layer of ground it was recovered. 

The desire to create English porcelain is most evident in a two-lined semicircle stamp on the bottom of the vessel, which reads, "Porcelain Opaque." In the bottom left corner of the bowl, there is also a carved "X."

Porcelain opaque turns out be one name of many for a specific type of ceramics known as white granite or ironstone. Individual potters created recognizable tradenames for their product in a highly saturated market.

According to the Transferware Collectors Club, ironstone was first patented in 1813. It was sometimes pearlware glazed, and known for its durability. White granite is an iteration of ironstone, and became popular in the 1830s. Stone china tended to be more highly decorated, whereas white granite was typically undecorated, non-vitrified (fired at a lower temperature causing less fusion of the clay), and molded. This was cost-cutting for both buyer and manufacturer.

The Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum compiled a list of names, including White Granite, Pearl Ironstone, Stone China, Opaque Porcelain, Granite China. It was most popular in the United States between 1840 and 1870. They write that, "Hundred of white granite patterns were produced and since different potters copied and slightly altered popular patterns and shapes, many patterns are very similar.”

The sugar bowl at Yeaton-Walsh is one example of this copying. We originally approached this artifact as if it was created by an English potter, William Smith, due to the transferprint design which is remarkably similar to his titled "Infant Sports."

 

William Smith is most infamous for producing fraudulent Wedgwood ware, for which he faced a court injunction from 1846-1848. He then began marking some of his pieces as 'Wedgewood," "Vedgwood," or "Queen's Ware." Josiah Wedgwood was an influential ceramicist who is attributed with perfecting creamware and producing high quality ceramics, such as those he created for Queen Anne. In 1845, William Smith and Co. patented five ceramic pastes whose ingredients of "Cornwall stone" and "china clay" point to a refined, vitreous, stone china. 

Another characteristic of William Smith pieces is his numbering and labeling of patterns on the backs of the pieces produced at his pottery. The image above shows the infant sports print, and the image to the left shows the labeled pattern which is on the back of the plate.

Our maker's mark doesn't reveal who the producer was, and is not recorded in the identification manuals I used for research. However, I was able to locate one other tureen with the same stamp accompanied by a "V." Perhaps the carved letters indicates a roman numeral numbering system in a similar manner to William Smith.

In addition to a disparity in the maker's marks, other differences between the original "Infant Sports" design and the sugar bowl include the placement of flowers, the architecture of the building in the background, detailing of the children's hair and clothes, and the shrubbery. However, the differences are minimal enough that both pieces produce the same visual effect.

In Historical Archaeology of the Irish Diaspora, Steven Brighton compares archaeological sites in Dublin, County Roscommon, Five Points in Manhattan, New York, and Paterson, New Jersey. In analyzing contexts which date between 1850 and 1906, the presence of white granite Irish families’ tableware indicate the integration into American consumer and popular culture trends. He writes, "The acquisition of austere white granite tea, table, and serving pieces [similar to] The act of visiting a physician may have been an indication and reflection of how these families viewed their social positions in America... an outward communication of inclusion, worthiness, respectability, and of the material possessions associated with American popular culture" (139). 

What this sugar bowl teaches me about the Welches is the importance of integration, rather than assimilation, into the United States. As immigrants, families such as the Welches and other Puddle Dockers were seeking communities and home spaces to reflect their joining the United States while maintaining their own cultural heritages. The Welches kept strong ties to their Irish Catholic faith, for which members of the family had a reputation in the community. Ceramics such as these may been interpreted as facilitators of this transformation and identity creation, whether from the necessity of tableware or an understanding of how various styles of ceramics were valued in the area.

The Welches probably were not using pearlware because they were concerned with luxury. Instead, consumption of white granite suggests not only the utilitarian value of owning durable and sturdy tableware to a working immigrant family, but also the transmission of American value systems through material culture. Several women in the house and family, including Mary, Mary Agnes, Ellen (Nellie), and Hannah worked in the service industry and as domestic workers in Portsmouth. They witnessed the consumption patterns of these upper class families, and sought to apply it to their own lives. 

Sources

• http://www.thepotteries.org/allpotters/937a.htm 
• https://www.reynardine.co.uk/Smith.html 
• https://www.transferwarecollectorsclub.org/research-learning/henrywoods-highlights/numbered-patterns-william-smith-co 
• https://apps.jefpat.maryland.gov/diagnostic/Post-Colonial%20Ceramics/White%20Granite/index-whitegranite.html 
• http://www.thepotteries.org/trade_names/index.htm 
• https://www.transferwarecollectorsclub.org/bulletin_previews/articles/terms.htm 
• Marks and Monograms on Pottery and Porcelain by William Chaffers, 1866: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Marks_and_Monograms_on_Pottery_and_Porce/-ikGAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 
• The Ceramic Art of Great Britain by Llewellynn Jewitt (1883):  https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Ceramic_Art_of_Great_Britain/SpcKAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 
• A Manual of Marks on Pottery and Porcelain by W.H. Hooper and W. C. Phillips (1894): https://www.museum.wa.gov.au/maritime-archaeology-db/sites/default/files/hooper_phillips_pottery_porcelain_marks_1894.pdf 
• https://www.google.com/books/edition/Advances_in_Archaeological_Method_and_Th/wSm0BQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=winkle 
• https://www.worthpoint.com/marks