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.... Extensive 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.”[53] 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 Liverpool 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 observed at the end of harvest.[54] Unlike the sgraffito tablewares, where style and taste were deciding factors in their survival, 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 symbols, mixed sometimes with pictorial and inscriptive allusions to the sea, particularly on jugs ascribed to Bideford. The oldest dated examples embody characteristics of design and techniques that relate them unmistakably to the tablewares, while later specimens made throughout the 18th and 19th centuries show an increasing divergence from the 17th-century style. An especially elaborate piece was made for display at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in the Crystal Palace.[55]

Less complicated pieces, with a minimum of incising, were made for ordinary use, as were plain pieces whose surfaces were covered with slip without decoration. The trailing and splashing of slip designs on the body of the ware, practiced in Staffordshire and many of our colonial potteries, apparently was not followed in North Devon.[56]

Sites Yielding North Devon Types

Excepting 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 settlement in North America, has been excavated at intervals by the National Park Service. The early excavations were under the supervision of several archeological technicians directing Civilian Conservation Corps crews. In September 1936, J. C. Harrington became supervising archeologist of the project, and until World War II he continued the work as funds permitted. Except for the privately sponsored excavation of the Jamestown glasshouse site by Harrington in 1947, no extensive archeological work was thereafter undertaken until 1954, when John L. Cotter was appointed chief archeologist. Thorough exploration of Jamestown was his responsibility until 1956.[57]

One of the most interesting subsites in the Jamestown complex was the two and one-half acres of lots which belonged successively to William May, Nicholas Merriweather, William White, and Henry Hartwell. The site was first explored in 1935. On this occasion there was disclosed a meandering brick drain that had been built on top of a fill of artifactual refuse, mostly pottery sherds. The richness of this yield was unparalleled elsewhere at Jamestown; from it comes our principal evidence about the North Devon types sent to America.