Figure 8. — Reproduction of a Yorktown salt- 

 glazed stoneware mug made from local clay at the 

 Williamsburg pottery. Height 12.8 centimeters. 



•'igure 9. — Poor-Duality mug of probable 

 local stoneware, discarded in the mid- 18th 

 century. Found in Williamsburg. Height 

 13.4 centimeters; capacity 23 fluid ounces. 



too thick. Two test mugs fired side by side at a tem- 

 perature of 2300° F., using thick and thin slips of iron 

 oxide, produced the solid-purple band and the brown 

 mottle respectively. 



Before dismissing the John Coke mug as merely an 

 example of wrong slip consistency, it should be noted 

 that this piece has none of the characteristics of the 

 Challis mug; the handle is quite different in both size 

 and shape and is applied without the folded terminal, 

 the proportions are poor, and the template used for 

 the base cordoning is so worn on its bottom edge that 

 the wide upper cordon is more pronounced than the 

 base itself, thus giving the whole vessel a feeling of 

 stubby instability. In addition, the body appears to 

 have been scraped round after the slip had been ap- 

 plied, possibly to remove the excess. All in all, it is a 

 miserable mug, and we may be forgiven for wondering 

 whether it is really a product of William Rogers' 

 operation. Some of his tankards may have been 

 made by apprentice potters, which would account for 

 somewhat varying shapes. But the handle is not an 

 inept creation as handles go; it is simply an entirely 

 different type from that used on the English stoneware 



that Rogers copied. Even more curious is the ques- 

 tion of the template, which should have been dis- 

 carded long before. While the throwing variations 

 of Rogers' potters may have been overlooked, little 

 can be said for a master craftsman who would allow 

 the use of tools so worn as to mar the esthetic quality 

 of every mug produced. We may wonder whether 

 there was another stoneware potter at work in Vir- 

 ginia in the mid-1 8th century or whether, after 

 Rogers' death, his factory's standards were allowed to 

 deteriorate to the level of the John Coke mug. 



Although the tavern tankards are the most informa- 

 tive of the Yorktown products, numerous other 

 stoneware forms were produced. These are well 

 represented in the National Park Service and Colonial 

 Williamsburg collections. The most simple and at the 

 same time the most attractive of these is a group ol 

 hemispherical bowls (fig. 10), two of which were found 

 in the same deposit as the Coke mug.' 1 One, which 

 had been dipped into an iron-oxide slip in the same 



» E.R. 140.J7A. 



96 



BULLETIN 249: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



