The "Poor Potter" of Yorktown
Pottery making in colonial Virginia, strongly discouraged by a mercantilistic England, seemingly was almost nonexistent according to the Governor's reports which mention but one nameless "poor potter" at Yorktown, whose wares are dismissed as being low in quantity and quality. This paper, the combined effort of a historian and an archeologist, provides evidence that the Yorktown potter was neither poor nor nameless, that his ware was of sufficient quantity and quality to offer competition to English imports, and that official depreciation of his economic importance apparently was deemed politic by the colonial Governor.
The Authors: C. Malcolm Watkins is curator of cultural history in the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of History and Technology, and Ivor Noël Hume is director of archeology at Colonial Williamsburg and an honorary research associate of the Smithsonian Institution.