identify a considerable range of brown stoneware as 

 I icing of Tidewater Virginia manufacture. There is, 

 of course, good reason to suppose that much, if not 

 all, of it is a product of the Rogers factory, although 

 until that site is dug one cannot be certain. It can 

 1» argued, perhaps, that if there was one more or 

 less clandestine stoneware potter at work in the area, 

 there might well be others. It could also be added 

 that two earthenware-pottery-making sites have been 

 discovered in the Jamestown-Williamsburg area for 

 which no documentary evidence has been found. 

 The very fact that such enterprise was officially dis- 

 couraged reduces the value of the negative evidence 

 to be derived from the absence of documentation. 



The most convincing evidence for the identification 

 of Rogers' stoneware comes from the already men- 

 tioned Swan Tavern mugs and from a quantity of 

 sherds found in a 4- to 7-inch layer beneath Vorktown's 

 Main Street in front of the Digges House in the 

 spring of 1957. This material was exposed during 

 the laying of utilities beside the modern roadway. 

 So tightly packed were the fragments of saggers and 

 pottery vessels that they appeared to have been delib- 

 erately laid down as metaling for the colonial street. 

 Several years later Mr. Watkins discovered that in 

 1734 William Rogers had been appointed "Surveyor 

 of the Landings, Streets; and Cosways in York Town." 

 It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that Rogers 

 disposed of his kiln waste by using it for hard core to 

 make good the roads under his jurisdiction. Such a 

 use of potters' refuse has ample precedent in that the 

 wasters and sagger fragments from the 1 7th-century- 

 London delftware kilns were dumped on the foreshore 

 of the river Thames to serve the same purpose. 

 Similarly, stoneware waste from the presumed Bank- 

 side factory 69 was used there to line the bottoms of 

 trenches for wooden drains. 



The pottery fragments found in the Yorktown road 



68 No trace of a kiln was found on the Bankside site in 

 Southwark; it is probable that the waste came from another 

 location nearby, possibly from the factory established in Gravel 

 Lane around 1690, which continued under various manage- 

 ments until about 1750. It may be noted that, in the same 

 way that much Southwark delftware has been erroneously 

 attributed to Lambeth, it is likely that brown stonewares in 

 the so-called stvle of Fulham was made in Southwark before 

 I .ambeth rose to prominence in that field. See F. H. Garner, 

 "Lambeth Earthenware," Transactions of the English Ceramic 

 (London: 1937 i. vol. 1. no. 4, p. 46; also John Drink- 

 wa ii r, "Some Notes on English Salt-Glaze Brown Stoneware," 

 Transactions of tit,- English Ceramic Circle (London, 191')', vol. 

 2, no. 6, p. 33. 



metaling comprised unglazed, coarse-earthenware 

 pans and bowls; pieces of badly fired, brown, salt- 

 glazed stoneware jars and bottles; and numerous 

 sagger fragments. 



In the years since interest first was shown in the 

 products of the Yorktown factory, a useful range of 

 examples has been gathered from excavations in 

 Williamsburg and in neighboring counties. The 

 single most significant item was recovered from 

 another kiln site in James City County (known as the 

 Challis site) on the bank of the James River. This 

 object, a pint mug (fig. 5), is the best preserved 

 specimen yet found. It is impressed on the upper 

 wall, opposite the handle, with a pseudo-official 

 capacity stamp "" comprising the initials \V R beneath 

 a crown (William III Rex) which, perhaps, might 

 have led to an intentional misinterpretation as the 

 mark of William Rogers' factory. The official English 

 marks generally were incuse or stamped in relief with 

 the cypher and crown within a borderless oval. They 

 were always placed close to the rim, just left of the 

 handle. Rogers' stamp was set in a much more 

 pretentious position and was enclosed within a 

 rectangle marking the edges of the matrix (fig. 6). 



The Challis site mug was a key piece of evidence, 

 being the first example found that illustrated the 

 position of the W R stamp, and it was sufficiently 

 intact for a drawing to be made, its capacity measured, 

 and its variations of firing studied. The association 

 of the Challis mug with the Rogers factory is based on 

 the fact that there is an identical stamp among the 

 Park Service's artifacts from Yorktown (fig. 7), along 

 with another pseudo W R stamp which had been 

 applied to the base of a tankard. 



A measured drawing of the Challis mug was given 

 to Mr. James E. Maloney of the Williamsburg 

 Pottery, 71 who kindly agreed to undertake a series of 

 experiments to reproduce the piece in his own stone- 

 were kiln, using local Tidewater clay. The results 

 of the first trials were extremely successful, and they 

 showed that it would be possible to reproduce exact 

 copies of the Yorktown wares from this clay (fig. 8). 

 Thus any doubt as to the supply source was dispelled. 



70 W. R. excise or capacity stamps continued to be impressed 

 on tavern mugs long after William III was dead. The latest 

 published example is dated 1792. Drinkvvater, op. cit. 

 (footnote 69), p. 34 and pi. Xlllb. 



rl The Williamsburg Pottery, on Route 60 near Lightfoot, 

 specializes in the reproduction of 18th-century stoneware and 

 slipware. 



92 



BULLETIN 249: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



