Surrey Hampshire Border Ware

Pottery continued to be made on the Surrey Hampshire Border, with Farnborough the main centre. Pottery produced in this area in the 16th -17th centuries seems to be referred to as Surrey Border Ware. 

The pottery is still buff coloured, but more refined.  Production techniques changed. The pottery was subject to two firings, the first to render the thinner vessels hard enough to decorate and a final firing after the application of glaze. 

In the mid 16th Century potters began to use a tougher type of clay. This together with improved firing techniques meant quartz in the form of sand didn't need to be added as a tempering agent to the clay mixture to add strength. Hence you can tell if you have the later shards by their smoothness and absence of 'black bits', as below

Mudlarking Finds: Possibly porringers and a Chafing Dish

Fine table ware began to replace the large utilitarian vessels of the medieval period, so another clue is form type. Potters extended their range to include these unfamiliar poetic names 'porringers',  'pipkins', 'chafing dishes' and  'fuming pots'. Porringers were used for foods which were eaten with a spoon and were often used to reheat food. 

Porringer 1550-1700 (Museum of London) 

Chafing dishes were portable heating devises. Hot coals were placed at the bottom and a dish balanced on the lugs to keep food hot. 

Chafing Dish 1550-1700 (Museum of London) 

Clear lead glaze began to be used which turned yellow when fired, in addition to the green glazes achieved by adding copper. The glaze on these 16th-17th century shards tends to cover the whole piece, usually the interior and is more uniform than the glaze found on medieval pottery. These examples include the edge of a large platter and a shard from a colander or strainer, another two new forms for the border potters. 

Border Ware Strainer 1601-33 (Museum of London) 

Other objects included money boxes,candle sticks, chamber pots and probably my favourite but not yet found, chicken feeding dishes. 

16th Century Border Ware Chicken Feeder (V&A) 

Germany was Europe's ceramic leader and at least one German potter settled in the Surrey Borders. This influence perhaps led Surrey borders to produce masses of tripod pipkins, a form popular in Germany. The characteristic small hollow handles are a reasonably common find along the Thames. A stick could be inserted into the handle to make it longer and of course less hot. Pipkins were placed on the coals at the edge of a fire and some recipes specified using an earthenware rather than a metal pipkin. 

Mudlarking Finds: Pipkin Handles 16th - 17th C

Tripod Pipkin 1636-1700 (Museum of London) 

Ellicksander Pottage.

Chop ellicksanders and oatmeal together,
being picked and washed, then set on
a pipkin with fair water, and when it
boils, put in your herbs, oatmeal, and
salt, boil it on a soft fire, and make it
not too thick, being almost boil’d put
in some butter.

 The Accomplisht Cook by Robert May 1678

When you scoop up one of these finds along the foreshore, it may well have come from a London which looked like this, 

Wyngaerde - Central London 1550 

This white pottery dominated London from 1500-1700 a period which saw London's population expand from  50,000- 600,000. It died out in the 18th century.  

Werra slipware, from Germany 1550-1650

I thought I’d identified most of the decorative pottery you can find along the Thames, so I was thrilled to find a new type. It was a treat to be back in detective mode, the UK finds database gave me the first lead  - ‘werra slipware’. It was this unusually large shard which prompted me to search 

Mudlarking Find: Werra Slipware 1550-1650

and interesting to find a dish which had a similar boarder design. 

Werra Slipware with Rabbit 1607 (Dr Fischer)

Werra Slipware was produced in Germany in potteries along the Werra River between 1550 – 1650. It was widely exported from the port of Breman and has been found in quantities in the low countries, North America and East and Southern England where finds are  concentrated in coastal and urban areas. 

Red bodied earthenware was decorated with a distinctive pale greenish yellowy slip - a thin clay mixture. The decoration tends to follow a standard format divided into zones. 

Dashes and lines were quickly struck around the rim of the plate. The potter then expertly looped thin bands of slip spiraling inwards. A wide band of swirls and squiggles forms a boarder followed by another set of bands which frame a central motif. Rather random  bright green splashes of copper oxide provide highlights in the centre and surrounding areas. 

Werra Slipware Plate with Pig/Boar 1615 (Museum Rotterdam) 

The central drawing is skillfully etched into the slip, a technique called sgraffito. Being a Werra potter was a tricky business, there was no room for error or second goes. Any mistake would be obvious. 

Animals or figures usually filled the centre. I love these confident, naive, bold, quirky pictures. I can't help think of our wonderful Grayson Perry (whose current Reith lectures on art are not be missed, link here.) when I look at these masterly drawings on pottery. 

Werra Angel 1613 (Museum Rotterdam)

Detail of Werra Slipware Horse (Museum Rotterdam) 

Werra Slipware Nobel Man on Horse back 1621 (Museum Rotterdam) 

Werra Ware with Dove 1585-1625 (Museum Rotterdam) 

I had picked up a few small pieces of these drawings over the last few months and noticed one or two appearing on other mudlarkers sites. I'd realised how different they were from anything else I'd found but thought they just came from one eccentric plate. My favourite is what I hope is a little bit of angel. 

Mudlarking Find: An angel? wing Werra Slipware 1550-1650. 

They were very keen on their angels

Werra Ware 1615

a couple of indecipherable shards I've found, but now I look at the second one, I wonder if the top right markings are 'I8' the second half of a date. Most plates seem to be dated and  it appears to be in the right place. 

Mudlarking finds: Werra Ware 1550-1650

Werra Slipware with Adam and Eve 1595 (Dr Fischer)

I was prompted to look through my box of slipware shards and pulled out a few more pieces of Werra Ware.

Mudlarking Finds: Werra Slipware 1550-1650

Mudlarking Find - Werra? slipware 

There is no doubt that Germany was the European ceramic market leader in the 16th and 17th centuries, it was where stoneware was perfected along with those deep cobalt blue and manganese purple glazes of Westerwald together with these ambitious slipware and sgraffito beauties.

 And finally a couple of Grayson Perry pots

. 

Chafing Dish

Once home, I knew I’d be determined to search until I found out what this piece of broken pottery was. I thought that strange little knob on the shard’s rim must give something away – and so it did.

Mudlarking Find: Rim Section of a Chafing Dish

The shard is quite big, its length 12cm. Yellow lead glaze covers the inside, a splash of green glaze under the handle where copper had been added looks almost accidentally placed.

Wheel made and well made with a deep robust rim and a stub protruding at right angles, all that remains of the handle. The knob rising from the rim above the handle has a small hole right through the middle, possibly where a stick had been placed before firing so this key part of the design kept its shape and place during firing.  I worked out fairly quickly  this shard came from a chafing dish, the only pottery boasting those rim knobs. Not sure where it was produced, it looks similar to the one below produced in Surrey/Hampshire borders or perhaps it was imported from France?

Chafing Dish 1550- 1700 Surrey Hampshire Ware (Museum of London) 

I immediately assumed it was a cooking vessel, similar to a pipkin or skillet.The description of the chafing dish in this picture throwing me somewhat ‘Diego Velazquez portraying an old woman poaching eggs in a glazed earthenware chafing dish over charcoal’ (Wiki) 

Diego Velazquez Woman Cooking Eggs 1618 (National Gallery of Scotland) 

I now reckon the earthenware pot, is just an earthenware pot and the chafing dish is beneath. So if I’m right – the chafing dish held the charcoal coals and not the food. Several chafing dishes I’ve tracked down seem to have holes or slits at the bottom, presumably to keep the coals bathed in oxygen and burning.

Chafing Dish Surrey Hampshire Boarders 1550- 1700 (Museum of London) 

Plates where placed on top, resting on the 4-8 knobs around the rim, to warm food or to cook food which required this type of gentle treatment. I’m assuming the gaps allowed hot air and fumes to escape, at the same time prevented the plates from overheating. They seem to be referred to as braziers in the States.

A recipe from the 1545 ‘New Booke of Cokerye’ mentions them

ake a dyche of rosewater and a dyshe full of suger, and set them upon a chafyngdysh, and let them boyle, then take the yolkes of vii or ix egges newe layde and putte them therto everyone, and so let them harden a lytle, and so after this maner serve them forthe and cast a little synamon and sugar upon them. (blogs.plimoth.org)

Like the skillet they seem to have been introduced from early Tudor times around 1480. A device that could be brought to the table to keep food warm, as described rather vividly in Wiki

‘ In 1520, Hernan Cortez reported to Charles V the manner in which Montezuma was served meals in  Tenochtitlan (now Mexico)

"He was served in the following manner: Every day as soon as it was light, six hundred nobles and men of rank were in attendance at the palace, who either sat, or walked about the halls and galleries, and passed their time in conversation, but without entering the apartment where his person was. The servants and attendants of these nobles remained in the court-yards, of which there were two or three of great extent, and in the adjoining street, which was also very spacious. They all remained in attendance from morning until night; and when his meals were served, the nobles were likewise served with equal profusion, and their servants and secretaries also had their allowance. Daily his larder and wine-cellar were open to all who wished to eat or drink. The meals were served by three or four hundred youths, who brought on an infinite variety of dishes; indeed, whenever he dined or supped, the table was loaded with every kind of flesh, fish, fruits, and vegetables that the country produced. As the climate is cold, they put a chafing-dish with live coals under every plate and dish, to keep them warm..." Gareth Dean, Medieval York 2008:140.

Imari Porcelain

Over the last year I’ve collected six pieces of porcelain with lines etched in red. Looking closely you spot trails of paintbrushed gold. You can just see the gold line gliding through the middle of the branch below on the left shard.  The red and gold are over glazed and contrast strikingly with the chunkier splashes of under glazed cobalt blue.

Mudlarking Find: Imari Porcelain

Mudlarking Finds: Imari Porcelain shards

Surprisingly they could be 350 years old. Initially made in Arita, Japan  and exported from the port of Imari, between 1650 – 1750. There are many subcategories, the shards pictured above I suspect are Kinrande Imari.

Imari porcelain was exported by the Dutch East India Company and became popular when Chinese Porcelain was difficult to source due to the chaos at the end of the Ming Dynasty in 1644 and subsequently by the decision of the Qing Dynasty to cease trading between 1656-1684. Quite something to think these small fragments may have been carried by these enormous old, old ships below 

Dutch Ships 1685 by Isaac Sailmaker (National Maritime Museum)

Export from Japan ceased when China opened for business again, as Japan couldn’t compete with China’s low labour costs. China cashed in on the popularity of Imari in Europe and replicated the designs. This pattern is most common in export porcelain in the early Qing dynasty period from 1662-1722.  I've also read there was a surge in Imari imports into England in late 19^th century when all things Japanese were in fashion. 

Chinese Imari Tea Caddy (Antiques now) 

Chinese Imari Style (Aspire Auctions)

Colander 1480- 1650

Hesitated before picking up the piece below with holes, now I'm really pleased that I bothered. Below I've carefully  propped it up with a very green English Tomato which was to hand ripening on our windowsill to better illustrate its origin. The shard is as big has my hand and has a shiny brown glaze on the inside and traces of a thin glaze on the outside. It took me a while to work out it was from a colander and that the little protrusion was in fact a foot - it was only when I came across the still life painting below that the penny dropped. 

Mudlarking Find: 16th Century Earthenware Colander

It is probably redware, the texture is quite rough and you can spot large inclusions in the clay. The holes are uneven. I've read that pottery in the 16th century was expensive and only owned by the well to do, the rest using vessels and cooking equipment made of leather, wood or pewter. I wonder how common colanders were? Were they must have kitchen equipment for those who could afford them? 

Still Life with Earthenware colander by Flemish Clara Peeters 1589- 1657

I can't end this post without reference to my surprise that this old still life was painted by a woman. Very little is known about her but she must have been pretty remarkable to have made it in 16th century. Apparently the painting is full of symbolism which is lost on our 21st century sensibilities, the fish represents Christ and are placed in the position of a cross, although I've read elsewhere is just represents abundance and has no moral or other subtext.  

Tea Ware

Dedicated to Norma, queen of teakies.

Tea first introduced to London in the mid 17^th century created demand for affordable, refined heat resistant cups and other equipment worthy of this expensive brew. Initially small handless Chinese porcelain tea bowls were imported.

In 1700 large saucers appeared. Some poured their drink into the saucers allowing the tea to cool and drank directly from these.  

Pieter Gerritsz Van Roestraeten. Chinese Tea Bowls, 17th century (on familiar things)

Fashionable family sitting around a tea table 1727 Richard Collins (V&A) 

The tea bowls I came across at my recent trip to the V&A were so much smaller than I’d imagined, due to the exorbitant cost of tea I suspect.

17th Century Chinese Export Porcelain Tea Bowl. 

In 1750 Robert Adams inspired porcelain tea sets in which tea cups had handles. Adams tea cups were taller than their base and came with a saucer – there began the English tea service set – with matching tea pot, sugar bowl, milk jug and even tea spoons. The English welcomed the handle having found the tea bowls rather messy and liable to burn their hands.

Throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries demand for new and cheaper teaware grew apace, driven by the growing fashion of tea drinking. We see the rise and fall of several types of ceramic. Europeans began to produce their own version of porcelain. The first success in England was at the Chelsea Porcelain Manufactory in 1743- 5. In the 1750s Wedgwood perfected the production of fine stoneware ‘black basalt ware’, popular for around 50 years.  Stoneware is water proof, so no glaze was required.  The 1770s brought Wedgwoods’s refined red stoneware Rosso antico,  affordable cream ware, shortly followed by pearlware.

Bone china was developed in England in the 1800s, by Joseph Spode, another name which keeps popping up. It was lighter and cheaper than porcelain and apparently better at carrying bright colours. It became and remains the posh tea cup of choice. 

1820 Spode London shape ( from spode history blog)

I’ve found a number of shards with small circular ‘stands’ , sometimes with a tiny design in the base. I suspect these are the bases of tea bowls, two I think are pearlware because of their bluish tint, the other porcelain.

Mudlarking Finds: Pearlware and Porcelain Tea Bowl Bases

Mudlarking Finds:Tea Bowl Bases

Occasionally I find the shallow curve of what I assume are saucers. The two with transfer ware I suspect are creamware the older middle hand painted example pearlware.

Mudlarking Finds: Saucer Fragments

This last group of fragments I’m guessing are also from saucers. In each case the middle of the base. This time their design is not so ‘tiny in the middle’. Each has a stand beneath, the curve of which is shallower than the tea bowls. A mixture of pearlware and porcelain.

Mudlarking finds: Pearlware and Porcelain Saucer Fragments

The History of Tea

So many Thames mudlarking finds are from tea ware.

As I was trying to trace its development, it occurred to me to make sense of it all; the place to start was the history of tea. Tea was first brought to England in the 17^th century and first consumed in coffee houses. ‘China tea’ and hot chocolate were introduced to the beverage menu from the late 1650s. Thomas Garroways promoting tea in his coffee house advert placed in Mercurius Politicus in 1658 ‘That Excellent, and by all Physicians approved, China drink, called by the Chinese, Tcha, by other nations Tay alias Tee, ...sold at the Sultaness-head, ye Cophee-house in Sweetings-Rents, by the Royal Exchange London".   

Coffee House 17th Century from British Museum. 

Samuel Pepys noted in 1660 "I did send for a cup of tee, (a China drink) of which I had never had drunk before". At one level the coffee houses appear to be equitable establishments with the aristocracy and wealthy business men rubbing shoulders with the less well to do. These establishments buzzed with discussion of current affairs and functioned as business networking hubs.

Different coffee houses attracted different clientele. Garraway’s was the haunt of scientists and natural philosophers. St James’ was favoured by traders and mariners. Will’s was for poets and White’s for actors and musicians. The mark of a true Renaissance Man in those days was to regularly patronise as many different houses as possible. 

Coffee houses play an important part in London history

‘Lloyd's of London had its origins in a coffeehouse run by Edward Lloyd,  where underwriters of ship insurance met to do business. By 1739, there were 551 coffeehouses in London; each attracted a particular clientele divided by occupation or attitude, such as Tories and Whigs, wits and stockjobbers, merchants and lawyers, booksellers and authors, men of fashion or the "cits" of the old city center. According to one French visitor, Antoine François Pervost, coffeehouses, "where you have the right to read all the papers for and against the government," were the "seats of English liberty." In London, coffeehouses preceded the club of the mid-18th century, which skimmed away some of the more aristocratic clientele. Jonathan's Coffee-House in 1698 saw the listing of stock and commodity prices that evolved into the London Stock Exchange. Lloyd's Coffee House provided the venue for merchants and shippers to discuss insurance deals, leading to the establishment of Lloyd's of London insurance market, the Lloyd's Register classification society, and other related businesses. Auctions in salesrooms attached to coffeehouses provided the start for the great auction houses of Sotherby's and Christie's. In Victorian England, the temperance movement set up coffeehouses for the working classes, as a place of relaxation free of alcohol, an alternative to the public house,’ (Wiki)

Edward Lloyd's Coffee House 1798

 ‘Coffeehouses were such important institutions to London society that one did not inquire where a fellow lived but rather what coffeehouse he frequented’.  (research.history.org)

The tea they consumed would be considered undrinkable today. Until 1689 tea was taxed in liquid form. The day’s tea would be brewed in the morning enabling the excise officer to tax, it was then kept in barrels and reheated when needed throughout the day. After 1689 tea was taxed by weight and fresh brews ensued.

Outrageously women were banned from coffee houses. You could however buy loose tea from coffee houses, this enabled women to enjoy tea at home. Kicking off the tradition of afternoon tea, women from wealthier households would gather for tea parties, a very genteel social occasion. The tea equipment would be set up by servants and the lady of the house would unlock the tea caddy and spoon the precious tea into the tea pot. Tea was unbelievably expensive, up to £10 a pound more than a labourer earned in a year. Sugar was added, another very expensive import. In this period milk was not used.

Tea drinking at home ca 1715 (Victoria and Albert Museum) 

Tea stimulated various claims and warnings, Pepys writing again in 1667 ‘Home, and there find my wife making of tea a drink which Mr. Pelling the Pottecary tells her is good for her colds and defluxions."

'After experiencing the Dutch "tavern garden teas", the English developed the idea of the Tea Garden. Here ladies and gentlemen took their tea out of doors surrounded by entertainment such as orchestras, hidden arbors, flowered walks, bowling greens, concerts, gambling, or fireworks at night. The tea garden began in the reign of King Charles II. Diarists John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys recorded visits to the New Spring Garden (also called Vauxhall or Foxhall) in the early 1660s. The tea garden reached the height of its popularity in the mid 18th Century the most famous were Vauxhall and Ranelagh. The gardens were both places to stroll and to be seen.

Tipping as a response to proper service began in the Tea Gardens of England. Small, locked wooden boxes were placed on the tables throughout the Garden. Inscribed on each were the letters "T.I.P.S.". If a guest wished the waiter to hurry (and so insure the tea arrived hot from the often distant kitchen), he dropped a coin into the box on being seated "to insure prompt service", hence TIPS. '(teacakesandteddybears.com)

Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens Samuel Wale 1751

Between 1720-1750 imports of tea through British East Indian Company quadrupled. One commentator Fernand Braudel asked "is it true to say the new drink replaced gin in England". By 1766 exports from Canton stood at 6 million.

In 1785 the government significantly reduced the tax on tea in an attempt to undermine the flourishing black market, which was diminishing the profits of legal tea merchants. Whilst tea remained expensive it was now acceptable to a much broader spectrum of society, seeds of our national tea drinking habit were set. 

The impact on pottery  covered in the next post. 

Tygs and Blackware 1580-1700

It took me a while to notice and even longer to appreciate the bold, sometimes high shine black glazed fragments on the Thames Foreshore.  I suspect for a long time I didn’t pick any up – being much more attracted to the pretties or the evidently old.

Thames Mudlarking Finds: High Shine Blackwear. 

Mudlarking Find: Base & Side of Blackware bowl?

There isn’t much available on the net on this stuff so hard to craft a clear story. At the moment I have a number of rather general leads. Quite amusing that all blackware means is that the pottery is black – or perhaps it’s nice that the archaeologists can be quite straight forward and dispense affectation.

Cambridge University archaeologists describe blackware as ‘Made between 1580 and 1700AD. The clay is very similar to that of Colchester Ware and Glazed Red Earthenware, but the vessels have a black glaze, coloured by the addition of iron. Usually drinking vessels such as mugs, but also tall, narrow cups with up to eight handles, known as 'tygs'.

Black Glazed Earthenware Tyg 1590-1700 probably from  Harlow (St Alban's Museum) 

Some talk about black glazed pottery being made at Harlow in Essex around the time they made metropolitan slipware in 1630 – 1700, others suggest  that they were made in Wrotham in Kent from 1675-1700. 

One source claims that this glaze was more expensive to make because they needed more fuel than low fired earthenwares (I presume either higher temperatures or a longer firing in the kiln).

Kathryn Kane on her blog Regency Redingote has done a nice bit of research on tygs, 

'The oldest of all these drinking vessels is the tyg and it can trace its origins back to Elizabethan times. Its name is even older, tracing back to the Anglo-Saxon word tigel, which meant anything made of clay, particularly red clay. Over the centuries, the word tyg, or tig, came to mean a special kind of drinking cup. A tyg was similar to a loving cup, but it had many more handles, the number increasing with the size of the cup. Tygs have been found with as many as ten handles. A tyg was a social drinking vessel, for it was filled to the brim, then passed around a group of drinkers. Each member of the group would have his own handle and a section of the rim of the tyg to himself. Through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, tygs were primarily made of ceramic, but by the eighteenth century, they could also be made of pewter, and very occassionally, might be made of silver. Because they were meant for use by multiple drinkers, tygs were found almost exclusively in taverns and the tap rooms of inns and public houses. But there were some who favored convivial private drinking parties and they might have had a tyg or two in their homes. It was these privately owned tygs which were most likely to be made of silver. These silver tygs might be engraved, sometimes with the name of the owner, or more often with some amusing rhyme about the consumption of the alcoholic beverages which they contained.'

Slip-decorated earthenware, Wrotham, Kent, 1682  (Allen Gallery)

Three Handled Tyg 1621 (Steve on Steins)

Tyg from Bernard Rackham's Mediaeval Pots

Tygs being passed Brugal 1525-1569 (Steve on Steins)