Scratch Blue Stoneware (Archaeological Find)
Files
Title:
Scratch Blue Stoneware
Description:
Journal Entry: April 1768*
Mother and Father just paid a visit. Boring, as usual. Before they left for home Mother left me a gift: a tea set. As if I needed another one! Mother had insisted on giving me a set when I first left to come to the College. It was a very fine set, real Chinese porcelain that she had made Father get for her. I never used it, of course, since I took my tea in the Commons. I ended up selling it to buy some rum. When she inquired about it I told her I had broken it. And what does she do? She gives me another set!
This one is of a much stronger material; she clearly does not trust me with porcelain anymore. The matching bowls and saucers are English made. They seem sturdy and have a rather pleasant floral motif on them made by blue lines ingeniously scratched upon the surface (Hume 2001:117; MACL 2002). Sadly they will also remain as decoration for I do not intend to use them.
I do not know why she keeps insisting on giving me tea sets. Of course, no respectable household is complete without one and I am quite familiar with the salutary effects of tea but such frivolous expenditure is unbecoming. At least my family is one of means and Father can afford Mother’s fancies. Similar excessive spending by women of the lower classes, however, is quite unacceptable and, frankly, a threat to our economy. Perhaps she thinks having my own set will encourage me to drink more tea and be more of a gentleman (Kowaleski-Wallace 1994).
In any case, even if I did not take my tea in the Commons, with the plan that is unfolding it is unlikely these tea bowls would see much use. For I have talked with several of my classmates and we are planning to get all of the Senior Sophisters to pledge to refrain from the drinking of tea as a protest of the increased taxes implemented under Chancellor Townshend (Morrison 1936:133).
*This is a fictionalized journal entry written from the point of view of an eighteenth century Harvard College senior.
Creator:
Norman R. Storer Corrada
Source:
Hume, Ivor Nöel
2001. A Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Kowaleski-Wallace, Beth.
1994. Tea, Gender, and Domesticity in Eighteenth-Century England. Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 23: 131–45.
Manhattan Rare Book Company
n.d. The Townsend Acts of 1767. The World’s Great Books. Accessed May 6, 2017. http://www.theworldsgreatbooks.com/townsendacts.htm
Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab
2002. “White Salt-Glazed Stoneware.” Diagnostic Artifacts in Maryland. Accessed May 6, 2017. https://www.jefpat.org/diagnostic/ColonialCeramics/Colonial%20Ware%20Descriptions/WhiteSalt-glazed.html
Massachusetts Historical Commission
2014. Three Cranes Tavern. MHC’s Archaeological Exhibits Online. Accessed May 6, 2017. http://www.sec.state.ma.us/mhc/mhcarchexhibitsonline/threecranes.htm
Morison, Samuel Eliot
1936. Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636–1936. Belknap Press. Reprinted, 2006.
Object Name:
Scratch Blue Stoneware
Inventory Description:
Scratch blue (white salt-glaze with incised lines filled with cobalt blue glaze) stoneware sherd. Curved chevron design. Likely part of a saucer.
Peabody Number:
2016.29.1386
Culture/Period:
Ca. 1744-1775
Intrasite:
H935 Level 4
Depth:
73-83cm
Class 1:
Ceramic
Class 2:
Sherd
Class 3:
Body
Quantity:
1
Height (cm):
1.4
Width (cm):
1.1
Depth/Thickness (cm):
0.8