I have seen the term queensware used in city directory advertisements into
the 1880s and possibly later.  It seems to have, at least for some historic
period peoples, to have been a generic term for white dishes.  I think this
points to the ambiguity of term and its usage in the past by ceramic dealers
and stores, which makes its use in the present for artifact analysis
problematic, much more so than your standard ware types that we typically
use.  Not that they are beyond debate.

M. Jay Stottman
Kentucky Archaeological Survey

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Christopher Fennell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2006 3:40 PM
Subject: Re: Midwestern Farmstead Biblio


> Mark --
>
> Here's a short excerpt from something I wrote a while back that addresses
> some of the variant uses of the terms queensware and whiteware by pottery
> manufacturers:
>
> The 1807 embargo deprived American markets of many imported goods,
> including British ceramics (Myers 1980:5). The Philadelphia pottery
> manufacturers responded with increased production and expansion of their
> product lines to fill this unmet demand (Myers 1980:5). In addition to
> their long-standing lines of utilitarian earthenwares and stonewares, by
> 1813 Philadelphia pottery manufacturers were advertising extensive lines
> of their own form of "Queensware" whiteware to replace the popular line of
> tablewares produced in Staffordshire (Barber 1909:111; Ketchum 1971:120;
> Myers 1980:6-7). This undertaking was the subject of proud report by the
> Governor of Pennsylvania in his annual message to the state legislature in
> 1809, stating that "'we have lately established in Philadelphia a
> queensware pottery on an extensive scale'" (Barber 1909:111). Potteries in
> Baltimore were producing whitewares by the 1840s, and the pottery
> manufacturers of East Liverpool, Ohio lived up to their town's challenging
> name by producing whitewares comparable to Queensware by the 1850s (Barber
> 1909:196; Ketchum 1971:134, 137).
>
> Barber, Edwin A. 1909. The Pottery and Porcelain of the United States.
> New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
>
> Ketchum, William C., Jr. 1971. The Pottery and Porcelain Collector's
> Handbook.  New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
>
> Myers, Susan H. 1980. Handcraft to Industry: Philadelphia Ceramics in the
> First Half of the Nineteenth Century. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
> Institution Press.
>
> Cheers,
> Chris