Please note that I referred to Japanese railroad worker camps occupied
by Japanese men. My 1989 MA thesis, "Japanese Railroad Workers on the
Union Pacific Railroad in Wyoming, 1891-1941, An Interdisciplinary
Approach" University of Wyoming discusses this very subject. There's no
Chinese about it. BJH
>>> [log in to unmask] 02 February, 2006 12:44 PM >>>
Barbara,
There is a major difference between the ceramics used by Chinese
workers and
the material shipped to American and British markets for household
ornamentation. The latter became popular in American Victorian houses
following the
1876 and 1893 Expositions. Ornamental Asian ceramics provide an
opportunity to
test for class status in domestic behavior. The so-called Geisha
designs were
applied to a variety of expensive to cheap export ceramics in Japan,
Korea
and China through the late 19th and through much of the 20th century.
Very
fine chargers, tea sets or flat ware with hand-painted temple, water
and temple,
or tea ceremony designs were more expensive than the mass-produced
varieties. Cheaper mass-produced transfer or stencil outlines accented
by limited and
sloppy hand-painting were and are available in a variety of retail
outlets.
However, Japanese ceramic collectors have produced large volumes of
books on
Asian export ceramics and care should be taken to mis-interpret
mass-produced
ceramics with American retail costs, as some of those command high
prices in
their collector markets.
One problem with scaling is that even the poorest families competed
with
wealthy families to present a nicely decorated parlor or serve guests
on fine
tea sets. This is not to say that generalities cannot be tested against
working,
middle, and high economic classes or by ethnic groups for quality of
Asian
ornamental ceramics. At the Alicante site at 5th and Redwood Streets in
San
Diego, California, my crew recovered tea set remains from a 1910
medical
doctor's house that I believe reflects American high economic class
parlor
display. Photographed with a macro-lens, samples of tea cups exhibited
exceedingly
tiny people with fine detail in their faces and clothing. On the other
side of
the coin, the Roeslein Homestead on the San Dieguito River in San
Diego
County, California yielded a pre-1917 working class household Asian
ceramics that
were mass-produced and only one or two specimens of any design. I
believe
more work needs to be done before anyone can attempt economic scaling
on Asian
ornamental parlor ceramics.
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.
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