Theories on the Porcelain Patterns at Col Paul Wenworth House

     What drew me initially to studying porcelain patterns was four beautiful sherds of pink luster painted bone china. They're most likely hand painted in over-glaze. While scouring the internet for a match I continually ran into the name Charles Allerton & Sons. The only piece I was able to find with a similar painted scalloping pattern that touches the trim paint came from a pottery company called Charles Allerton & Sons. CA & Sons was founded as Allerton, Brough & Green in 1831 with factories in Parks Works. Longton, and Staffordshire and became CA & Sons in 1859. A listing is pictured below with makers mark. In an advertisement from 1864 and another advertisement from 1869 "Chas. ALLERTON AND SONS" boasts decorated china in "gold, silver & orange luster." This leads me to believe the sherds recovered from the Col. Paul Wentworth House came from a saucer or teacup potentially from the Charles Allerton & Sons company.

    Aside from the lusterware bone china I ended up focusing my attention on Chinese export porcelain. Some Chinese export porcelain patterns are easily identifiable, as it is a highly collectible and extensively studied good. However, because what was unearthed at the Col Paul Wentworth was very small, entirely plain, or with significant degradation to the decoration, hunting down whole examples is very difficult.

    Initially in the field, Dr. Baker, one of the supervising archeologists, theorized the sherds pictured below were a type of Chinese export porcelain made in Arita commonly known as "Imariware" due to the presence of the very saturated red-orange and finely black line hand painted over-glaze. However upon further research and examination, it seems most, if not all Imari porcelain has a strong presence of cobalt blue under-glaze which is nowhere to be seen in the sherds we suspected of being Imari. 

    One sherd is a rim piece of Chinese export porcelain just over 1mm long painted in blue underglaze. The sherd is so small I wasn't going to try to identify the patten, yet while I was clicking through examples of border designs hunting for another pattern I stumbled right into an identical example on the Maryland Diagnostic Artifacts website labeled "Trellis motif dates c. 1690-1797."

    Around 1720 the Chinese began producing porcelain, primarily for export, in a style known in the West as Famille Rose (the French for "pink family"). The most commonly used Chinese term to refer to this style of porcelain is  "*fencai*" meaning "powdery colors" or "pale colors." This is because Famille Rose is defined by its introduction of rose pink to the available color palette of over-glaze. Famille Rose was also the introduction of a lead-arsenic based opaque white pigment that allowed potters to access a wider range of color mixing and pastel hues. The origins of Famille Rose are somewhat uncertain but the leading theories are either that it was introduced to Chinese pottery by Jesuits bringing enamel painted gold and copper to the Imperial Chinese court, or possibly by Dutch traders bringing South German tin-glazed earthenware. In my search to identify three sherds of a Chinese export porcelain teacup the closest styles of painting I was able to find were all Famille Rose. Unfortunately because Famille Rose is an over-glaze and therefore not baked into the clay itself during the firing process the decoration is more likely to become damaged and degrade over time. Also because Famille Rose is more commonly very elaborately decorated it's more difficult to find examples of Famille Rose where the majority of the porcelain body is visible. 

    The border design on the inside of two of the three possible teacup sherds appears to be quite distinctive however whilst combing through patterns there were very little examples of a border with two orange lines. I was able to find one similar example of the curl-circle-curl pattern listed for sale on eBay but it's not quite a match.