I've had enough info from various people, particularly David Barker,
to post a summary of the total information on the blue sprigged material
udner discussion.  I'll use Susan Lawrence's most recent reply as
a useful starting point.
 
 
On Tue, 2 Sep 1997 08:57:41 +1100 Susan Lawrence wrote:
 
> The wares Alasdair describes (if I'm interpreting him correctly) are not
> really blue-painted - they are moulded white bodies (I won't vouch for
> porcelain vs any other type of paste) with applied designs highlighted in a
> mauve-blue underglaze, and are usually tea and tablewares.  What they
> resemble most of all is the decorative icing on wedding cakes... Here too
> (Australia) they seem to be mid-late 19th century, 1850s-1890s.  They
> really are ubiquitous, and show up on practically every site of that date.
 
Susan is absolutely correct in her description of the materials under
discussion.  David Barker identified the correct name for these wares
as "Chelsea Sprig" - although the reason for the name is open to debate.
As we have all noted, these wares occur most commonly in teawares.
Plundering further from David Barker's post, documented Staffordshire
makers are Hilditch, Ridgway and Daniel.  He suggested that Godden's
_Staffordshire Porcelain_ volume and possibly a new book on
Daniel Patterns by Price & Berthoud might deal with this type of vessel,
though these sources were offered by without checking (and I haven't
had a chance to check myself yet, either).  Antonia Malan and Susan
Lawrence both noted that their materials (in South Africa and Australia,
respectively) were from post-1850 contexts, while Adrian Praetzellis
(in California) noted that his materials were typically from early 1850's
contexts "which probably means that the British consumers were tired
of it, and the potters were trying to dump it on the California market."
This latter hypothesis fits in neatly with David Barker's observation of
manufacture dates of "most likely late 1820s through to 1850 or so".
These dates also tie in neatly with the dates for the Welsh sites that
I'm currently looking at.  I wouldn't really want to speculate on the
later South African and Australian dates too much, although the possibilities
that spring to mind are A) Chelsea sprig is being made later than we
thought B) as with California, the outdated materials are being dumped
on colonial sites (sorry for my outmoded imperialist dogma ;-), with the
process continuing much later.  Theories based on more concrete experience
and observation are, of course, more than welcome.
        In addition to the porcelain (bone china and hard-paste porcelain
to be particularly accurate) observed by everyone, Antonia Malan has also
seen Chelsea sprig on refined earthenware.  David Barker corroborated that
the pattern occurs on ironstone/white granite, but given differences in
definition over the latter term, they conceivably might not mean precisely the
same ware.
 
The below is a slightly different issue as initially raised by Mark Branstner...
(although the quoted remarks are, again, Susan Lawrence's)
 
> Re marketing differences, you're absolutely correct Mark.  As Antonia Malan
> pointed out in a thread a while ago, marketing in the US was quite
> different to the situation in the British Empire, where white-wares
> especially are less common.
 
And of course, even within individual nations, there can be interesting
differences in assemblage composition.  In my Welsh materials, for example,
there appears to be a relatively large amount of cut-sponged whitewares and
ironstones, although whether this is caused by local preferences, or is simply
a function of what was available in a small, isolated rural community on the
fringes of the British body politic remains to be seen.
 
Alasdair M. Brooks
University of York