It's extremely unlikely to be Australian-made.
Without going into the details of the dynamics British pottery exports into Australia*, all 19th-century whitewares in Australia that I know of are British-made, from the high end of the market down to the low end. As the iconic excavations at the pottery of James King of Irrawang demonstrated, there certainly were attempts from the earliest colonial days to replicate "high-class wares" in Australia, but locally-made colonial Australian materials are virtually all (unless Mary Casey or someone else cares to correct me) red, buff, yellowish and brown-bodied earthenware or stoneware. There is no tradition of colonial industrial production of whiteware in Australia.
And believe me, my past experience on 19th-century sites in Wales, and the 19th-century Cambridgeshire stuff I'm currently looking at, amply demonstrates, British potteries are perfectly capable of both producing "something so crude" and keeping it for the home market.
The real surprise isn't that a British pottery made something that our modern value judgements find to be so ugly, but rather that something so ugly was shipped to Australia. Australia was, relatively speaking, an extremely wealthy market, and there's clear documentary and archaeological evidence that much of the materials shipped to Australia were considered high end. Australia was by no means a 'forlorn colony'; after the gold rushes began in the early 1850s, it was one of the wealthiest places on the planet (though, as Penny Crook would remind us if she were reading this, there are still clear differences in quality in and between Australian ceramics assemblages to the extent that considerations of vessel quality can be analytically meaningful in Australia).
Alasdair
*At the risk of seeming to insert a shameless plug, my book "An Archaeological Guide to British Ceramics in Australia, 1788-1901" features a further - albeit brief - discussion of the topic.
----- Original Message -----
Subject: Re: HISTARCH Digest - 25 Oct 2007 to 26 Oct 2007 (#2007-85)
From: "MORGAN A RIEDER" >;[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, October 30, 2007 2:06
I agree with Alasdair Brooks that it's pretty damn ugly. It is not stoneware; it hardpaste white earthenware, inexpertly painted. I can't believe that British potteries would have produced something so crude, even for export to a forlorn colony, so there's there's the possibility that it might have been an early Australian attempt to mimic high-class wares from the mother country.
Morgan Rieder, RPA
----- Original Message -----
From: Alasdair Brooks
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2007 3:56 AM
Subject: Re: HISTARCH Digest - 25 Oct 2007 to 26 Oct 2007 (#2007-85)
Leaving aside the issue of the vessel's form for the moment, it isn't even stoneware.
From the photograph, it looks very much like a whiteware object rather than a stoneware object - in other words it's refined whitebodied earthenware. Assuming the assemblage is typically Australian, the bottles it was found with - presumably all buff- or brown-bodied saltglazed - are, on the other hand, certainly stoneware.
For what it's worth, that would also make the object British-made rather than Australian.
As to the form and decoration, notwithstanding Ron's dogfood bowl theory, if the supposition that it did have a lid is correct then - with that combination of overglaze gilt and moulded decoration - my first reaction would be to lean towards it being toiletries-related.
I see nothing in the decoration incompatible with it being very late 19th-century. Irrespective of the date, I think I can however safely say - with some degree of confidence - that it's pretty damn ugly.
Alasdair Brooks
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This stoneware dish was found in Australia during earth moving on a
building site for a new house. It was in a layer that also contained ceramic
ginger beer bottles that date from around the 1880s. Nothing more
recent was found.
http://www.box.net/shared/static/1a56q6mipm.JPG
The dish must have had a lid that rested on its internal rim. There are no maker's
marks.
My neighbour is asking me - because I am a forensic archaeologist. I have told
him that the gold design looks too abstract to date from the period of
the 1880s. I would have guessed the dish is no earlier than the 1920s.
Is my impression correct?
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