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.