C. Malcolm Watkins and Ivor Noël Hume
| Part I: Documentary Record—C. Malcolm Watkins | [75] |
| THE CROWN AND COLONIAL MANUFACTURE | [76] |
| THE "POOR POTTER" AND HIS WARES | [79] |
| APPENDIXES | [86] |
| Part II: Pottery Evidence—Ivor Noël Hume | [91] |
| THE SALT-GLAZED STONEWARE | [91] |
| STONEWARE MANUFACTURING PROCESSES | [102] |
| THE EARTHENWARES | [105] |
| CONCLUSIONS | [109] |
Figure 1.—Modern Yorktown, Virginia, showing original survey plat on which William Rogers' name appears on lots 51 and 55. Additional properties which he acquired are mentioned in his will as lots 59, 74, and 75.
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.