Many of the
collections in the Section of Archaeology were recovered from the city of
Philadelphia. These collections are full of beautiful ceramic vessels that
document the European settlement and early occupation of this area. Today we
will look at a collection from Market Street that contains a wide variety of
ceramics.
The city of
Philadelphia was founded in 1682 by William Penn and his Quaker followers and
by the end of the eighteenth century was the largest urban center in the United
States. The earliest settlement of the city began along the waterfront of the
Delaware River along Front Street and spread north and south. Market Street
runs west from Front Street toward the Schuylkill River and is part of the “old
City”. As well as being one of the earliest sections of the city, the east end
of Market Street housed the first printing office of Benjamin Franklin, in
which he printed The Pennsylvania Gazette.
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Map of the city of Philadelphia in 1802
Showing Market Street and the waterfront (Public Domain)
Archaeological excavations were undertaken in the 1970s by PennDOT prior
to the construction of an access ramp over I-95 between the Penn’s Landing Development
and Market Street.
Preliminary work on
this project would involve the demolition of 19 structures from Market Street
to Church Street and between Front and Second Streets. The firm of Abraham Levy
Architect, under the direction of Herbert Levy and Charles Hunter, was hired to
conduct archaeological salvage prior to the demolition activities.
Surprisingly, beneath
the buildings located within the demolition area a number of historic features
were found, including wells, privies, garbage pits, and foundations of earlier
buildings. These features represented the daily life of this part of the city
during the early-eighteenth through mid-nineteenth centuries. Thousands of
artifacts were recovered from the excavations and a total of eight sites were
recorded (36Ph1 thru 36Ph8).
During the earliest
years of settlement of Philadelphia, a large proportion of its ceramics would
have been imported from England. Types such as Nottingham and Fulham
stonewares, Staffordshire earthenware, and North Devon Sgraffito are all named
for the areas of England in which they were produced. Examples of these types were recovered
from the Market Street sites.
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Early English ceramics, including: (l.
to r.) Fulham stoneware, Nottingham stoneware, combed Staffordshire, North
Devon Sgraffito earthenware, combed Staffordshire (photo by PHMC)
Porcelain from China
was a very popular type of ceramic that was introduced to Europe in the
sixteenth century and was later produced specifically for the export market. Attempts
to reproduce Chinese porcelain in the early to mid-1700s were unsuccessful but resulted
in a new type of ceramic called tin-glazed earthenware, which was manufactured
in England, France, Italy, and Spain.
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Examples of tin-glazed earthenware (top)
and Chinese porcelain (bottom) from Market Street (photo by PHMC)
Another common type
of ceramic was red earthenware or redware, so-called due to its red color. Redware
has been made for centuries and continues to be made to this day. Although the
first redware would have been brought from England and Europe, local potteries
were soon established. Local clay sources from within the city itself were used
for manufacture of bricks and likely were also used for making redware.
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Brightly colored examples of redware
from Market Street sites (photo by PHMC)
Two such local
redware potters were Daniel Topham, who operated a pottery along 8th
and Filbert Streets from 1766 to 1783, and Andrew Miller, Sr., who purchased
the same property and operated his pottery from 1785 until his sons took over
in the early 1800s. It is not known if any of the redware pieces in the
collection were made by either Topham or Miller, but it is certainly possible
that some of the redware comes from one or both of these sites.
Throughout the 1700s,
potters continued to attempt to produce “porcelain-like” pottery and more
refined ceramic types. These ranged from more delicate redwares, white (and
scratch-blue) salt-glazed stoneware, and creamware.
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Three teapots: (l. to r.) Refined red
ware, white salt-glazed stoneware, and creamware
Thin-bodied, white earthenwares
with beautiful and creative decoration, called pearlware, developed near the
end of the eighteenth century. Pearlwares were very popular and came in a wide
range of decorative techniques including mocha, banded or annular, marbled,
engine-turned, rouletted, dipped, and many others.
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Pearlware and creamware vessels with a
variety of decoration were recovered from Market Street sites: mocha and banded
mocha, dipped, engine-turned and rouletted, and marbled (photo by PHMC)
Even more delicate
pearlwares can be found in the form of teacups and bowls. A great assortment of
teacups, bowls, and saucers were recovered from the Market Street sites. Many
of these are decorated with flowers, geometric designs, and Chinese scenes that
have been hand painted or transfer-printed.
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Pearlware teacups and saucers in
varying designs and patterns (photo by PHMC)
These are just some
of the many types of ceramics that were found during the excavations at Market
Street. While the majority of the pieces discussed here were imported from
Europe there were also a great number of potteries in and around the
Philadelphia area throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that may
be examined in future blogs. Additionally, ceramics were not the only artifacts
recovered from these sites as they were rich with domestic goods and personal
items that tell a story about the lives of the people of Philadelphia.
Due to the numbers of
archaeological projects and recorded sites in Philadelphia, there are also many
other site collections that contain these types of historic ceramics. As
always, the Market Street assemblage and other collections held by the Section
of Archaeology are available for use by anyone with scholarly research objectives.
Archaeological
research of early ceramics has yielded fascinating information about
consumerism in colonial America. The wealthy Quaker households of Philadelphia
contained fine imported ceramics and glass stemware as opposed to the
working-class neighborhoods with their locally made redware plates, bowls and
tankards. The key role Philadelphia’s location along the Delaware and
Schuylkill river played an important part in distributing these ceramics into
the surrounding communities and researchers have traced Philadelphia potters
across Pennsylvania.
We hope you’ve
enjoyed learning more about these beautiful ceramics but will also understand
the important information they hold for archaeologists in understanding the
activities of our early settlers. Preservation of the archaeological record
from these historic neighborhoods have produced numerous publications. Below is a list of just a few that help to tell the story of
Philadelphia’s past. We hope you will be inspired to examine the archaeological
record of your community and help us to preserve the past.
For Additional Reading:
Carpentier, Donald and Jonathan Rickard
2001 Slip
Decoration in the Age of Industrialization.
Ceramics in America 2001. Chipstone
Foundation, Milwaukee, WI.
Cotter, John L., Daniel G. Roberts, Michael Parrington
1992 The
Buried Past: An Archaeological History of Philadelphia. University of
Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA.
Articles on Bonnin and Morris, Philadelphia porcelain
makers:
Hunter, Robert
2007 Ceramics
in America. University Press of New England, Lebanon, NH.
Myers, Susan H.
1980 Handcraft to Industry: Philadelphia Ceramics
in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century. Smithsonian Studies in History
and Technology, No. 43. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
Orr, David G.
2003 Samuel
Malkin in Philadelphia: A Remarkable Slipware Assemblage. Ceramics in
America 2003, pp. 252-255 (http://www.chipstone.org/article.php/97/Ceramics-in-America-2003/Samuel-Malkin-in-Philadelphia:-A-remarkable-Slipware-Assemblage).
Yamin, Rebecca
2008 Digging
in the City of Brotherly Love: Stories from Philadelphia Archaeology. Yale
University Press, New Haven, CT.
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