tnit vifd?*!! jjehidjm wic ^ic cinct (Jcccji wolt l>^Ixn Cc 

 to f<^n^ mail Ucjiiig in jjclddjcni vub ciitcni hnuff • vn 

 Janiad? fp ^au hcftlid? wotmt vfi cinec hivaffm woU- 

 vn&i(loircfi0uc:» 



C®ic mmi baftcttn in Ccc ftnt coftcncj . 

 vmbfaecC\>nn& bic fhtl bct» 



For kitchen utensils, tiles, and other objects subject 

 to heat or breakaa;e, the same Fremington clay 

 received an admixture of fine pebbles, or gravel, 

 secured at a special place in the bed of the River 

 Torridge in Bideford. The use of gravel was described 

 by 18th-century writers as well as by later historians. 

 As found in America, the gravel-tempered ware 

 apparently is unique among the products of either 

 English or colonial American potters. 



A specialty of the North Devon potteries was the 

 manufacture of ovens made of the same gravel-tem- 

 pered clay as the kitchen utensils. The appearance of 

 these ovens and the method of making them remained 

 virtually the same from the 17th through the 19th 

 centuries. At Jamestown, a wholly reconstructed 

 oven reveals typical North De\on traits throughout. 



Figure 35. — Baker's portable oven in a woodcut 

 from Ulrich von Richenthal's Concilium z" Constancz, 

 printed at Augsburg, Germany, in 1483. Lessing 

 J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. 



while a fragment of an oven from the John Howland 

 House site near Plymouth displays, under a micro- 

 scope, the same qualities of paste and temper as in a 

 fragment of an o\en obtained in Bideford by the 

 Smithsonian Institution. Sherds of gravel-tempered 

 utensils from several American sites also match the 

 oven fragments. Paste characteristics, exclusive of 

 the temper, are the same in the sgraffito ware, the 

 gravel-tempered ware, and the ovens, furthermore. 



PAPER 13: NORTH DEVON POTTERY IN 17TH-CENTURY AMERICA 



57 



