We have encountered only one other instance of 

 ovens having been made at any place other than the 

 North Devon communities around the Fremington 

 clay beds. Calstock lies some 35 miles below Bide- 

 ford in the southeast corner of Cornwall, just over the 

 Devonshire boundary. 



As for evidence concerning the manner in which 

 these ovens were used in England, we have already 

 seen that they were built into houses. Jewitt wrote 

 that they "are simply enclosed in raised brickwork, 

 leaving the mouth open to the front." They were 

 heated until red hot by sticks or logs, which were 

 then raked out with long iron tongs. ^' A bundle 

 of gorse, or wood, according to Jewitt,^- was sufficient 

 to "thoroughly bake three pecks of dough." Pococke's 

 remarks to the effect that the ovens were covered 

 over with embers to keep in the heat suggests that 

 they were sometimes freestanding. However, this 

 could also have been the practice when ovens were 

 built into fireplaces. 



From an esthetic point of view, the crowning 

 achievement of the North Devon potters was their 

 sgraffito ware, examples of which in Brannam's 

 window display have already been noted. Further 

 evidence in the form of 17th-century sherds was found 

 by Charbonnier around the site of the North Walk 

 pottery in Barnstaple. These consisted of "plates 

 and dishes of various size and section .... E.xtensive 

 as the demand for these dishes must have been, 

 judging from the heap of fragments, not a single piece 

 has to my knowledge been found above ground." *' 

 The apparently complete disappearance of the 

 sgraffito table wares suggests that they ceased to be 

 made about 1700. They were apparently forced 

 from the market by the refinement of taste that 

 developed in the 18th century and by the delftware 

 of Bristol and London and Li\-erpool that was so 

 much more in keeping with that taste. 



However, certain kinds of sgraffito ware continued 

 to be made without apparent interruption until early 

 in the present century. Instead of useful tableware, 

 decorated with symbols and motifs characteristic of 

 17th-century English folk ornament, we find after 

 1700 only presentation pieces, particularly in the form 

 of large harvest jugs. The harvest jugs were made for 

 annual harvest celebrations, when they were passed 

 around by the farmers among their field hands in a 



folk ritual obsei-ved at the end of harvest." Unlike 

 the sgraffito tablewares, where style and taste were 

 deciding factors in their survi\al, these special jugs 

 were intended to be used only in annual ceremonies. 

 Thus they were carefully preserved and passed on 

 from generation to generation, with a higher chance 

 for survival than that which the sgraffito tablewares 

 enjoyed. 



The style of the harvest jugs is in sharp contrast to 

 that of the tablewares, the jugs having been decorated 

 in a pagan profusion of fertility and prosperity sym- 

 bols, mixed sometimes with pictorial and inscriptive 

 allusions to the sea, particularly on jugs ascribed to 

 Bideford. The oldest dated examples embody char- 

 acteristics of design and techniques that relate them 

 unmistakaljly to the tablewares, while later speci- 

 mens made throughout the 18th and 19th cen- 

 tinies show an increasing divergence from the 1 7th- 

 century style. An especially elaborate piece was made 

 for display at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in the 

 Crystal Palace." 



Less complicated pieces, with a minimum of in- 

 cising, were made for ordinary use, as were plain 

 pieces whose surfaces were covered with slip without 

 decoration. The trailing and splashing of slip desis^ns 

 on the body of the ware, practiced in Staffordshire 

 and many of our colonial potteries, apparently was 

 not followed in North Devon.'* 



Sites Yielding North Devon Types 



E.xcepting the Bowne House oven and a 1698 jug 

 (see p. 45), no example of North Devon pottery used 

 in America is known to have survived above ground. 

 Archeological evidence, however, provides a sufficient 

 record of North Devon wares and the tastes and 

 customs they reflected. Following are descriptions of 

 the principal sites in which these wares were found. 



JAMESTOWN, VIRGINIA: MAY-HARTWELL SITE. 



The site of Jamestown, first permanent English set- 

 tlement in North America, has been excavated at 

 intervals by the National Park Ser\ice. The early 

 excavations were under the supervision of several 



S' Jenkinson correspondence (see footnote 41). 

 52 Jewitt, op. cit. (footnote 34), pp. 206-207. 

 ^ Charbonnier, op. cit. (footnote 31), p. 258. 



5* Jenkinson correspondence (footnote 41). 



55 Made in Devon, .in Exhibition of Beautiful Objects Past and 

 Present, Darlington Hall, 1950, p. 9. 



5« Charbonnier, op. cit. (footnote 31), p. 258. 



34 



BULLETIN 225: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



