Dear Craig,

We recently completed a Phase I on a (presumably) African American tenant house site in Galesville, Maryland, a small town located near the Chesapeake Bay.  The tenant house was occupied from the late 19th century through the 1940s.  We found several sherds of hotelware marked "Ebbitt House" on the ground surface near the burned remains of the house site.  Documentary research indicated that plates like these were made for the Ebbitt House Hotel in Washington, DC, located at F St. and 14th St. NW, between 1886 and 1910.  This hotel was one of the most fashionable in Washington at the time and later became the popular "Old Ebbitt Grill" that still exists today.  We are not sure how this vessel from DC high society came to this relatively poor tenant house 30 miles from Washington, DC, but it makes an interesting connection.  Thank you, George, for bringing your article to our attention!  We are planning an oral history project with members of the
 local African American community and will now bring up the Ebbitt House to see if they remember anything.

Craig- contact me offlist if you'd like a copy of our recent technical report with a little more information about the Ebbitt House plate.

Cheers,
Stephanie       



On Monday, March 17, 2014 3:00 AM, HISTARCH automatic digest system <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
 
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HISTARCH Digest - 15 Mar 2014 to 16 Mar 2014 (#2014-50)  
    

HISTARCH Digest - 15 Mar 2014 to 16 Mar 2014 (#2014-50)
Table of contents:
	* Ceramics with names/crests 
	1. Ceramics with names/crests
	* Re: Ceramics with names/crests (03/16)
From: "C. Cessford" <[log in to unmask]>  

Browse the HISTARCH online archives.   Dear George,

Thank you very much for the information. Both the examples that you 
quote are exactly the sort of thing that I was looking for.

Yours

Craig Cessford



> 
> 
> 
> I find your project on ceramics that are marked for institutions that 
> are
> recovered at a distance from those institutions interesting.  Back in 
> the
> early 1970s a bowl from the Atlantic Lunch in Washington D.C. was 
> recovered
> from the excavation of Tabbs Purchase in St. Mary's City, Maryland 
> which
> was sixty miles from that restaurant.  Oral History showed a community
> connection between the Atlantic Lunch and St. Mary's County.  My 
> article
> "Ode to a Lunch Bowl: The Atlantic Lunch as an interface between St. 
> Mary's
> County, Maryland and Washington D.C." was published in the 1986 volume
> of *Northeast
> Historical Archaeology* Volume 13, pages 2-8.  This article can be
> downloaded for free from the web site of the Council for Northeast
> Historical Archaeology.
> 
> 
> 
> There is another situation where institutional vessels may be recovered 
> a
> long distance from the intended use.  We lived in Roebling, New Jersey 
> from
> 1995 to 2008.  Roebling is 15 miles south of Trenton, New Jersey that 
> had a
> massive pottery industry that made a lot of hotelwares.  My wife, Amy 
> C.
> Earls, began collecting these wares from the local flea markets and 
> antique
> shops.  Many of these wares were from hotels in New York, Florida,
> Massachusetts and other places.  A number of them have slight defects 
> that
> meant they were seconds.  When an intuition placed an order for wares 
> with
> their crest, the pottery company would produce more vessels that 
> ordered,
> so that the order would only be filled with perfect wares.  Those that 
> were
> less than perfect wound up in the local communities around the 
> potteries
> and would have been available at a lower cost.  Hope this helps.
> 
> 
> 
> Peace,
> 
> George L. Miller
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 6:13 AM, C. Cessford <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> Dear all,
>> 
>> I am currently conducting some work on ceramics that have been marked 
>> by
>> the manufacturer with the name and/or crest of an individual or 
>> institution
>> who ordered the ceramics. My work relates to the University of 
>> Cambridge
>> and we have recovered material associated with a number of colleges 
>> from
>> several sites that indicate that the pottery was deposited some 
>> distance
>> from the actual college. It appears that some college vessels may have
>> passed through several stages between primary use and ultimate 
>> deposition.
>> 
>> The marking of ceramics with the name etc. of an 
>> individual/institution is
>> a relatively widespread 18th-20th century practice and I am looking 
>> for
>> parallels for discovering marked ceramics some distance for the point 
>> of
>> usage.
>> 
>> The only North American example I am aware of relates to the Earl of
>> Dunmore, the last crown governor of Virginia (1771-75). Fragments from 
>> his
>> service of armorial porcelain have been found at various sites in
>> Williamsburg, possibly because they were carried off when the 
>> Governor's
>> Palace was ransacked or sold when Dunsmore's surviving personal 
>> effects
>> were auctioned off. My references for this date to the 1960's so I 
>> would be
>> interested in anything more recent on this.
>> 
>> Thanks for any pointers.
>> 
>> Craig Cessford
>>