David and all,
Thank you David for a clear statement about the problems that can
arise with using overly-precise terminology. At this point, we
collectively as a profession just don't know enough about who
exactly made what and when. Noel Hume's book was wonderful for
its time and is a great place to start for identifications of "Astbury"
and "Jackfield" and the like but too many people take what is in
that book as dogma. We need much more work before we can be
as sure about ceramic identifications and interpretations as we
thought we were 20 years ago.
Meta Janowitz