Review by Norman F. Barka
John Dwight’s Fulham Pottery, Excavations 1971–79

Chris Green. John Dwight’s Fulham Pottery, Excavations 1971–79. London: English Heritage, Archaeological Report 6, 1999. xvi + 380 pp.; 259 bw and 8 color illus., 16 tables, 18 appendices, bibliography, index. 

The archaeological excavation of kiln sites is often the only way to obtain information about kiln size and design. The recovery of associated ceramic products can also pinpoint pottery types to a specific potter, locale, or both. Archaeological context very often dates pottery and waster assemblages as well.

Pottery manufacturing sites are important sources of information about the industrial and economic past. Such is the case with the Fulham pottery site near the City of London, where archaeological research has revealed new information about master potter John Dwight. When I visited Fulham in the 1970s, I was very impressed by the importance and complexity of the Fulham site, and overwhelmed by the amount of waste pottery that had been excavated—an estimated seventeen tons. I wondered how the archaeologists ever would find the time and dedication to study the massive amount of pottery recovered from the site. Obviously they did, as Chris Green’s long-awaited book attests. 

The book focuses on the life and pottery of John Dwight, one of England’s premier potters, who not only experimented with the manufacture of porcelain but also was the first English potter to make stoneware successfully. Dwight, born sometime between 1633 and 1636, worked at his factory in Fulham from ca. 1672 to the time of his death in 1703. Historical documentation on Dwight was assembled by Haselgrove and Murray;^[1] the majority of evidence on Dwight’s work, however, comes from nearly a decade of archaeological rescue between 1971–1979. Most of the fieldwork and laboratory work was carried out by an amateur group, the Archaeological Section of the Fulham and Hammersmith Historical Society, continuing a laudatory English tradition of weekend volunteerism.

The book is divided into three parts, the site (59 pages), the pottery products (116 pages), and the appendices (192 pages). The site report consists of six chapters: a historical outline; an interesting discussion of the topographical setting of the site before Dwight established the pottery in ca. 1672; a detailed description of Dwight and post-Dwight structural developments at Fulham, from ca. 1672 to the later nineteenth century; the evidence for Dwight’s early experiments at the site, ca. 1672–1674; Dwight’s stoneware production, 1675–1703; and pottery production in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries by Dwight’s descendants and others. 

Although the structural finds of the Dwight period survive in poor condition due to later disturbances, Green discusses Dwight’s stoneware kilns and their possible derivation. Because many of the original publications and reports are difficult to obtain, it is quite useful to have various other kiln sites with accompanying kiln plans described in one place. Rectangular kilns were used at Fulham until ca. 1780 when circular, bottle-type kilns appeared. Figure 22 shows a reconstruction of a rectangular stoneware kiln and part of its load, ca.1685; these kilns were vertical updraft kilns with the load chamber above the firebox. Figure 23 shows the plans of Fulham kilns compared with four other kiln sites. As Green discusses, there is a definite similarity in plans. Notably, it appears that Dwight’s kilns were in the London delft industry tradition, not in the Rhenish tradition as represented by an early kiln at Woolwich. The English kilns at Fulham, Vauxhall, and Southwark show striking similarities to the kilns excavated in Yorktown, Virginia.^[2] 

A common ancestor to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English chimneyless delftware kilns appears to be the Italian tradition represented by the 1548 tin-glazing kiln of Piccolpasso. Green points out that the tin glaze kiln seems to have been the standard for stoneware production throughout the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He makes an interesting observation, that “by Dwight’s time kiln styles were technically interchangeable, and it was simply custom or tradition which led them to be so rigidly maintained and regionalised.” In other words, as has been shown in Yorktown, the rectangular kilns could be used for both tin and lead glaze manufacture as well as for salt-glazed stoneware. 

The second part of the book deals exclusively with the products manufactured at Fulham, from Dwight’s time to the twentieth century. Until 1675, Dwight experimented with an impressive array of finewares based upon Rhenish, Chinese, Dutch, and English products. Site evidence, consisting of fragments of mostly Chinese-inspired miniature vases, thrown and lathe turned, indicate that Dwight’s early period was spent experimenting with porcelain manufacture. But sherds found at the site show his efforts to have been unsuccessful. Other porcelain experiments or trials involved engobes, vapor, or dipped glazes. Numerous drawings of these test vessels, test chips, and fragments of nicely sculpted white statuary attest to Dwight’s advanced outlook and abilities. As early as ca. 1675, Dwight also copied Chinese red and bronze-colored unglazed stonewares such as Yixing teapots. He manufactured chemical wares and crucibles, and experimented with the manufacture of porringers painted to look like delftwares. He imitated a variety of Raeren-Westerwald-type vessels with applied strip and other kinds of decoration. Common stonewares, mostly tankards, gorges, and bottles, formed the majority of Fulham’s seventeenth-century production. Bellarmine masks and medallions were applied to bottles at certain periods. The author gives pointers on how to distinguish between the products of Fulham and contemporary German products before 1685, and how to date Fulham stonewares in two-year intervals beginning in ca. 1673–1674. In the 1680s Dwight made and sold a variety of finewares such as white china, marbled ware, and red stoneware.

Green also describes a large variety of finewares and common stonewares produced by Fulham potters in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. This summary of later Fulham wares will be extremely useful to archaeologists working in England and America. 

The third part of Green’s book consists of eighteen appendices that account for nearly one-half of the book’s content. Examples of the subject matter include the following: kiln debris and kiln furniture; applied decoration on seventeenth-century stonewares; ale-measure marks (excise stamps) on eighteenth-century drinking vessels; index of excavated features; and Doulton and Watts’s price list of 1873. These detailed studies will be of great use to students of ceramics. 

Chris Green’s book represents the most thorough publication to date on the archaeology of a specific pottery site. Although his work, in the best of British tradition, is largely descriptive, the author does discuss such other issues as landscape, geographic distribution of Dwight’s pottery, quantification, terminology, and so forth. The maps, drawings and photographs are excellent. A Harris Matrix drawing of the stratigraphy and features may have simplified the evolution of structural evidence at the site. 

Prior to reading this book, John Dwight was an oft-mentioned but “fuzzy” figure. Now, thanks to the archaeology and the book, archaeologists and students of ceramics will have a much better understanding of Dwight, a remarkable and prolific potter, and the role he played in the English ceramic industry.

Norman F. Barka
College of William and Mary