Moira Vincentelli. Women and Ceramics: Gendered Vessels. Studies in Design and Material Culture. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000. Distributed in the U.S. by St. Martin’s Press. xii + 290 pp.; bw and color illus., bibliography, index. $35.00. Ceramics are one of the most durable objects of material culture, and they reflect the aesthetic tastes of the societies in which they are produced and consumed. Because they are time and culture sensitive, they are widely employed by scholars to reconstruct histories of past and present societies. In Women and Ceramics: Gendered Vessels, Moira Vincentelli advances the thesis that women have been primary producers and consumers of ceramics. Her principal claim is that not only have women been left out of the history of this technology but also that their self identity and social status then, as now, are intertwined with its art and craft. Vincentelli systematically reviews these claims by documenting women’s contributions to the technical and aesthetic properties of ceramics, the techniques they have employed, and their long history of involvement in pottery production. Drawing on archaeological, ethnoarchaeological, and ethnographic evidence, she engages in a broad-ranging discussion of the long-term history of ceramic production that begins with the world’s earliest producers of ceramics and ends in the present. In this, the author is successful at presenting information on myriad and some little-known sources. But, perhaps because her undertaking is ambitious, coverage is not always even or complete, and the author fails to consider important scholarship that may have altered some of her conclusions. Nonetheless, scholars and others with interests in feminism, the history of women, ceramics, and technologies will find much that is original in both substantive and theoretical realms. In addition, the book is beautifully produced. It includes numerous illustrations and black-and-white photographs of potters at work in home and factory settings and pottery from a range of societies. Twelve color plates provide exquisite reminders of the aesthetic qualities of ceramics, even those used for the most mundane activities. The book is divided into eleven chapters. Its basic premises are set out in chapters 1 through 3 and chapters 10 through 11. Chapters 4 through 9 describe case studies for the production and consumption contexts in which women have engaged in the craft as producers, business owners, collectors, writers, and teachers. Vincentelli’s theoretical position is drawn from structuralist, post-structuralist and French feminist theory, feminist archaeology, and her experiences as a university teacher of art history. The work is inspired by subject matter such as “women artists, gender and feminist issues, Welsh art, non-western art and material culture, and the applied arts” (p. 2) and new ways of thinking that have the potential to bring women and ceramics into the center of the art historian’s image of craft as art. She is especially persuaded by developments in material culture studies in which objects can be viewed as “texts,” as proposed in the works of the structuralist and post-structuralist theorists Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Pierre Bourdieu. These works provide a basic structure with which to understand the power relations by which crafts and certain production techniques, such as hand building or ceramic decoration, have been assigned an inferior position to art. Closely allied to this position are the works of psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan and French feminist thinkers who view language and culture as primary mechanisms by which the unconscious is shaped. The notion of ecriture feminine (feminine writing) developed by Julia Kristeva is seen as an oppositional mode to the prevailing patriarchal culture which is transmitted through language. The ecriture feminine assumes that a pre-symbolic phase of learning is aligned with the feminine. Taking these views an additional step, Vincentelli argues that “ceramics as made by women, and even more, as used by women can be mobilized to create meanings of solidarity or subversion in forms of visual ecriture feminine” (p. 4). Vincentelli’s interrogation of the visual ecriture feminine is embodied in the technical choices that she claims women have consistently made. She notes, for example, that although contemporary western and non-western women potters have used the potter’s wheel and more efficient techniques in deference to today’s world economies, many women potters have returned to techniques like hand building that have strong “feminine” associations that presumably reside in pre-symbolic phases of learning: “Coiling a pot is a rhythmical activity...[that]...requires smoothing and polishing and a delicate handling...[and]...is given a great deal of time. It is valued as a pleasurable activity and the polishing stones are treasured tools passed from mother to daughter” (p. 237). Speaking of the potter Magdalene Odundo (originally from Kenya, now in Britain), she states: “Her vessels make reference to the natural world—to bodies, nipples, gourds or stamens....They exude a tactile and sensuous experience through beautiful burnished surfaces whose soft sheen speaks the loving attention that has created them” (p. 237). There is, therefore, a gendered component to women’s ceramic production in this consistent embracing of technical practices that foster maximum closeness between the hand and the material. And finally, in a discussion of figurine production, she notes that figurines produced by women, because they “explore female sexuality and female symbolism,” tend to cause distress among critics because these representations of female sexuality embodied in the very “practice of ceramics” replace the male with the female gaze, thus empowering the latter while destabilizing and undermining “patriarchal order” (p. 246). Although some scholars would argue with Vincentelli’s interpretations of these contemporary works, they would appreciate the rich array of case studies included in the book that document women’s technical choices and their involvement in various aspects of ceramic production and consumption in both western and non-western societies. Some examples are based on reviews of the works of others, but the remaining are from the author’s primary Weld of research. On the production side, they include women’s participation, throughout a variety of historical periods, in work cooperatives, as independent artisans, and in industrial and traditional contexts, each of which demonstrates the ways in which women have contributed to ceramic history and technology. On the consumption side, five chapters are devoted to the collection and display of ceramics, workshop arrangements, promoters and patrons, writers and teachers, and running a business. These chapters demonstrate how women have influenced the development of ceramics as court patrons and as owners of shops and galleries, attesting to their intense involvement in determining the direction of aesthetics and the functions of ceramics. Although, on the whole, Vincentelli provides a well-grounded history of the links between women and ceramics, the work is dependent upon broad generalizations. Some of these can be sustained in her discussions of contemporary potters and even her attempts to link them to the remote past, but in other instances, her argument breaks down. Indeed, many of the basic premises of the book rely on a selective reading of the archaeological literature and reviews and critiques of models employed by archaeologists. Included are discussions of early matriarchal theories, mythologies involving pottery production, and some case studies in which ceramic production has been attributed to women. Unfortunately, Vincentelli for the most part relies on outdated analyses and ignores the explosion of ceramic studies that focus on gender issues. When the works of feminist archaeologists are consulted, they seem to have been subject to a poor reading. As feminist archaeologists have shown, there has been a tendency in archaeology before the 1990s to associate women with lower status crafts. Status differences in crafts are based on modern categories in which technologies are ranked hierarchically and various arts and crafts or production techniques are assigned higher and lower value. These categories or hierarchies are then imposed on past societies. Along the same lines, feminist archaeologists are in general agreement that women’s engagement in pottery production is defined by gender ideologies that are established within a particular cultural context and that, in past archaeological reconstructions, evolutionary biases have wrongly assumed that women ceased to produce ceramics when production moved from the household to barter- or market-based economies. These findings are very much in accord with Vincentelli’s critique of the older archaeological literature; however, she parts company with feminist archaeologists when, based on her interpretations of contemporary works, she associates women with specific technical practices. Statements to the effect that certain “techniques and modes of production constitute a sufficiently distinct phenomenon to be designated women’s ceramic traditions” (p. 32) and “hand building, burnishing, painting, and bonfiring are never exclusively women’s techniques, but they are predominantly so” (p. 35) simply cannot stand without attention to the specifics of time and place. Although Vincentelli’s attempts to uncover basic structures that lie beneath exclusionary biases in which women’s work has been accorded lower status are very much in line with recent attempts by archaeologists, her interpretations could not be more anathema to the works of feminist archaeologists who have avoided and vigorously argued against essentialist assumptions in which women’s biology (or here psychology) is assumed to be aligned with some universal, natural, static, inevitable, and predictable sets of mind and body. More importantly, they would appear to contradict Vincentelli’s own cautions concerning the kind of evolutionary thinking that has restricted our understanding of the contributions women have made in both the present and past. That said, there is much grist for the mill, and although many, but not all, readers will disagree with Vincentell’s interpretations, the examples and source material described in this book are a virtual treasure trove. Artisans not formerly known now take their place in the history of women and ceramics, as do the works of many contemporary studio and traditional potters. Thus, the book offers a partial remedy to a forgotten history and at the same time provides inspiration to women engaged in this and other artistic endeavors. Rita P. Wright New York University David Gaimster, editor. Maiolica in the North: The Archaeology of Tin-Glazed Earthenware in North-West Europe c. 1500–1600. Occasional Paper No. 122. London: British Museum, 1999. 188 pp.; bw and color illus. £25 paperbound. Any attempt to review a collection of papers delivered at a colloquium is akin to trying to shake hands with an octopus: one doesn’t know with whom to begin or where to focus. Equally baffling is the readership enigma. In the Weld of commercial publishing the first questions asked are (1) who will want to read this book and (2) how many people will buy it? Subsidized publishing, on the other hand, is different. The book doesn’t have to turn a profit, and if the readers are relatively few, at least they will be appreciative. I had long supposed that the terms colloquium and symposium were synonymous, but there is a none-too-subtle distinction between them. According to Webster, the latter is a social gathering at which ideas are exchanged or where “specialists deliver short addresses on a topic or related topics.” A colloquium, on the other hand, is a heavy-duty affair whose definition includes neither the words social nor short. The British Museum’s invitation of March, 1997, brought together the top people in their related Welds and lasted two full days. As a title, Maiolica in the North has a somewhat chilling ring, but between this volume’s pages lies an iceberg of information, a little of it on the surface and much more beneath. Compiled under the editorship of the British Museum’s David Gaimster, sixteen authors combined to address a single century’s production of one ceramic ware from a relatively small region. The result is a study in remarkable depth and of assured durability. The tin-glazed wares manufactured in the South Netherlands were first brought to the attention of English-reading curators and collectors by Bernard Rackham in Early Netherlandish Maiolica with Special Reference to the Tiles at the Vyne in Hampshire. The tiles had been discovered in a garden of the Tudor house believed to have been built by Sir William Sandys, who had bought them while serving as Treasurer of Calais and who returned with them in 1522 or thereabouts. At an uncertain date in the nineteenth century, the discovered tiles were relaid in the Chapel at the Vyne, where they remain. Their importance to Rackham, and to John G. Hurst, who discussed them in his colloquium address, was simply stated: These were, and are, the earliest documented tin-glazed tiles found in England, and have a prefatory place in any discussion of the ware, no matter what its form.1 At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the shapes were few: vases with or without ring handles, some rather squat and ugly jugs, and waisted pharmaceutical albarelli. Logic dictates that most of the vases and jugs were imported prior to the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1533, being decorated with the sacred YHS monogram peculiar to Catholicism. However, as John Hurst pointed out, the presence of so many fragmentary examples from secular sites may be evidence of private (even heretical?) devotion. Not until much later did Netherlandish production expand to include inferior copies of the elaborately decorated “faienza” dishes that were the glory of North Italian ceramic art in the latter years of the fifteenth century. Growing collector interest in early English delftware that began in the late nineteenth century inevitably carried with it curiosity about the genesis of the decoration and the technology of the ware’s manufacture—which, in truth, was Italian and not Dutch. It was out of that interest that Bernard Rackham’s pioneering book was born. Two years earlier, in an equally seminal book, Rackham and his partner Herbert Read published English Pottery and in it addressed the Italian connection. They stated that “Research in archives and the yield of excavations have given us what we may probably regard as the truth of the matter.” As the 1997 papers reveal, modern technology enables us to go much further, littering the way with the carcasses of hitherto sacred cows.2 In an editorial note, David Gaimster grapples with the all-too-familiar problem of misleading terminology and differentiates between style and place of origin. Here Netherlandish is retained to identify the sixteenth-century adaptation of Italian styles and technology into the Spanish Netherlands and the adjoining Dutch Republic. The Netherlands, on the other hand, refers only to the modern sovereignty so named. It can be argued, therefore, that tin-glazed wares produced in the modern Netherlands can fairly be called delftware (with a lowercase d unless attributable to Delft itself), while similar wares produced in what is now Northern France should be called faience. In the sixteenth century, the northern maiolica industry flourished first in the vicinity of Antwerp, and it was from there, in 1567, that the first known maiolica potters emigrated to Norwich in East Anglia and sired the delftware industry that would dominate the tables of middle-class English households throughout the seventeenth century. Since the Second World War, much more information has been garnered through archaeology, first as the result of German and Allied bombing, and subsequently by urban renewal programs both in Britain and in Western Europe. That diversity of sources is made manifest by the spread of contributors to this volume, e.g., Jan Baart in Amsterdam, Johan Veeckman on Antwerp, Alejandro Gutierrez at Southampton, John Allan on the West of England at Plymouth and Exeter, John Cotter at Colchester, plus the editor and others on finds from London. This reviewer had what is now seen as the privilege (but then the unenviable task) of beginning salvage work on the building sites of post-war London, and there made the first archaeologically controlled recovery of a still important group of Netherlandish-type maiolica. Those three associated pieces came from a chalk-walled cellar on the site of what is now Gateway House on Queen Victoria Street. Consequently, their inclusion in this volume is cause for some small satisfaction—until one discovers that two of them lie among the nomenclaturic carcasses. Of the three vessels, I followed Rackham in accepting the two small vases as Netherlandish while cautiously describing the jug as being of “Faenza style” on the evidence of a parallel in the Victoria and Albert Museum. One of the vases bore the sacred initials YHS already well known on similar, tin-glazed vases that featured a pair of ring handles. But this example differed, having what are best described as inverted-lobe handles. The second vase was decorated with a stylized peacock feather device and had the same handles. But regardless of their anomalous handles, I would continue to accept the vases as Netherlandish until NAA proved otherwise and the results were published in the colloquium’s seminal paper, “De Nomine Jhesu...&c.,” by Hugo Blake.3 NAA is not, as one colleague suggested, an acronym for Netherlands Automobile Association, but stands for Neutron Activation Analysis. That relatively new process is to ceramic clay what DNA testing is to innocents on death row. It compares the elements found in the body of one pot to those of another from a known kiln site, revealing beyond all argument whether both samples are or are not from the same source. The NAA matches for the Gateway House vases were found not in Antwerp, but in Northern Italy. In the course of the British Museum’s extensive testing, many another hitherto Netherlandish vessel changed its nationality. The impact of this revelation provides the focus for most of the papers contained in this volume, as is indicated by the title of David Gaimster’s introductory essay, “Maiolica in the North: The Shock of the New.” Needless to say, NAA is not limited to the re-classification of tin-glazed earthenwares of the sixteenth century. It can be applied to wares of every clay composition and date and requires only that there be an anchoring data base of known origin. Although, in theory, NAA promises to solve most ceramic questions, in reality it is as yet limited to specific questions being asked by specialists who can thereby contribute to their laboratory’s own research. In short, the process is not yet economically available to Aunt Mary, who wants to know whether her heirloom chamber pot really did come from Bideford as family tradition claimed. That caveat aside, Maiolica in the North: The Archaeology of Tin-Glazed Earthenware in North-West Europe c. 1500–1600 belongs in the library of every museum and collector having an interest in the evolution of delftware, maiolica, or faience. Four years after the last of the speakers left the podium, one dares to hope that someone among them will be moved to synthesize the colloquium’s shared knowledge into a conventional book that can be read easily and with instruction by all who have an interest in these wares. To the archaeologist, however, the published papers make it very clear that the visual identification of ceramics based on style or osmosis is no longer acceptable. For the time being, at least, we are left fearing that we are wrong, yet helpless to be right. Within this narrow field alone, the class that for generations has been called Early Netherlandish Maiolica has suddenly become Italo-Netherlandish, meaning “we’ll get back to you with one attribution or the other after we can afford to invest in Neutron Activation Analysis.” The British Museum Press stands tall among the few subsidized presses able to elegantly publish volumes whose sales do not offset the cost of production and distribution. That this is Number 122 in the Museum’s series of Occasional Papers speaks eloquently for itself. Ivor Noël Hume Williamsburg, Virginia 1. Bernard Rackham, Early Netherlandish Maiolica with Special Reference to the Tiles at the Vyne in Hampshire (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1926). 2. Bernard Rackham and Herbert Read, English Pottery (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1924), pp. 38–39. 3. Bernard Rackham, Italian Maiolica (London: Faber and Faber, 1952), fig. 27b. Kieron Tyler and Roy Stephenson, with J. Victor Owen and Christopher Phillpotts. The Limehouse Porcelain Manufactory: Excavations at 108–116 Narrow Street, London, 1990. MoLAS Monograph 6. London: Museum of London Archaeology Service, 2000. x + 73 pp.; color illus., line drawings, glossary, index. £16.50. Over the last thirty years, with the enactment of government legislation protecting archaeological resources in both the United States and Great Britain, hundreds of technical reports on salvage excavations have been written annually. Most of these reports and the resulting artifacts end up in government repositories, having only been reviewed by a few bureaucrats overseeing the compliance process. Much of the compiled historical and archaeological information awaits rediscovery in the drawers and shelves of these government agencies. Occasionally a technical monograph is made available through a limited publications series. Even more rarely, the results of a rescue excavation are so important that they catch the attention of a broad audience and receive the royal treatment of a glossy, full-color publication. Such is the case with the Museum of London’s excavation of the Limehouse porcelain manufactory site in the east London borough of Tower Hamlets. This important factory operated between 1745 and 1748, making it one of the earliest of the English porcelain endeavors. The history of English porcelain, in general, is of great interest to collectors, connoisseurs, economic historians, and students of ceramic innovations. The early attempts at making porcelain are of particular significance as the English factories conducted a tremendous amount of experimentation in the pursuit of marketable products. The existence of the Limehouse porcelain factory came to light in 1928, when historical references to it were published. Products of the porcelain factory were not specifically identified until 1959, when the eminent porcelain scholar and collector, Dr. Bernard Watney, attributed a group of porcelain long held to be of Liverpool origin to the Limehouse factory. Although these identifications were made using the toolkit of the connoisseur, Dr. Watney provided well-reasoned arguments in his published paper.1 The actual physical remains of the factory lay undetected until the Museum of London’s Department of Greater London Archaeology investigated the site in 1990 in advance of the proposed construction of the Limehouse Link road tunnel. The nature of the agreement between the archaeologists and the construction managers permitted eight weeks of investigation on the site, and the authors acknowledged that consequently much of the Weld research was done “under rescue conditions” (p. 1). These conditions are not unfamiliar to most archaeologists who work on development-driven projects, but the resulting well-designed and informative report is rare for the discipline. The report consists of four chapters, a bibliography, eighteen data tables, and 127 color illustrations. The first chapter provides background information about the project, a geological and historical overview of the area, and a review of previous research on Limehouse porcelain. The second chapter details the excavation and reviews the features and structures found on the site prior to the construction of the porcelain factory. The report is mercifully concise in this section (at least for the porcelain aficionado), providing enough historical context for the reader to place the archaeological remains of the 1745–1748 porcelain manufactory within the other occupations and activity on the site beginning in the fifteenth century. The sequencing of site activities is presented in a straightforward technical manner with drawings and descriptions of features, deposits, and strata. This information is presented devoid of any sociocultural context for the finds or activities outside of the Limehouse porcelain factory period. The bibliographic references make it clear, however, that additional information is readily available from the unpublished excavation reports and additional publications in progress. The third chapter contains the primary information about the factory site, the kiln, and the porcelain products. The color photographs of the site and fragments are first rate. In an interesting collaboration, Phillips Fine Arts Auctioneers provided photographs of antique Limehouse porcelain examples from the catalogs of the recent Watney collection sales. It is hard to imagine historical archaeologists in the United States calling upon Christie’s and Sotheby’s auction houses to help illustrate their ceramic reports, although the effort might be mutually beneficial. Line drawings, a hallmark of British archaeological reports, are used in a limited but helpful fashion. The primary value of chapter 3 lies in the juxtaposition of excavated sherds with extant porcelain examples. What is remarkable after all is said and done is that only 1,402 glazed and unglazed porcelain sherds and kiln furniture fragments were recovered from the excavation. The authors make considerable use of sherd weight in their tabulations—the entire 1,402 sherds weighed 10,385 grams, merely twenty-three pounds. From these sherds, at least thirty different forms were identified. A breakdown of forms encountered in the stratified proveniences is tabulated by number of sherds and weight. Unstratified porcelain finds also are classified by form. Typologies of the painted and molded decoration are provided. Interestingly, the only decoration found on the site is underglaze blue painting. Extant Limehouse wares with colored enamels are known, however, suggesting that overglaze enameling was done elsewhere. Molded decorative motifs are also discussed and classified into eight basic types. The porcelain information is generally descriptive, rather than analytical. It is difficult to interpret the tables without referring back to the plan drawings of the contexts in which the sherds were recovered. One weakness of the report is the limited discussion and presentation of data on the kiln structure. Although the photography of the kiln remains is excellent, an attempt at a detailed pictorial reconstruction would have been useful. This is particularly true for the discussion on parallel kiln construction from other excavated porcelain factories. It is hoped that this information will be presented in future reports. The report by J. Victor Owen provides a glimpse of the rich potential of geochemical analysis of porcelain bodies, although only seven sherds were examined. The preliminary results suggest that at least two types of porcelain were made at the Limehouse factory. Although quite technical in nature, the discussion indicates the potential for understanding the compositional differences among other early English porcelain manufacturers. The concluding chapter, eagerly awaited after the presentation of so much raw data, is disappointing, being only slightly more than two pages long. Leading off with Neil McKendrick’s observation on the “china fever” that swept Europe in the mid-eighteenth century, the authors place the Limehouse factory example within a brief context of early English attempts to manufacture porcelain. From there, they offer tantalizing snippets for further study of the Limehouse site. One observation links the architecture of the kiln to the porcelain technology employed in France, where successful porcelain manufacture had been ongoing for at least twenty years prior to the establishment of Limehouse. In trying to make sense of the financial viability of the Limehouse factory, the authors propose the European model of factory sponsorship, with aristocratic, even royal, backers but offer no evidence to identify the potential investors in this early English factory. Although it is known that a Joseph Wilson and Company operated the factory, very little else is known. Identifying the economic underpinnings of the Limehouse factory seems a fruitful path for future researchers. One statement reveals a surprising confession about the analysis of eighteenth-century domestic ceramic assemblages in England. Whereas research on colonial American sites has been ongoing for at least fifty years, relatively little attention has been paid to English domestic assemblages. One would initially suppose that the consumption of English porcelain is best understood by looking at its relationship to Chinese porcelain, Staffordshire white salt-glazed stoneware, and other English ceramic types in the homeland of its production. The authors, however, generally find an absence (emphasis mine) of English porcelain in their domestic sites. Although the situation is certainly not entirely dissimilar, English porcelain does exist, albeit in small quantities, in many American contexts, especially the domestic sites of the upper classes. Thus, as with the case of English pottery, American archaeological sites may ultimately provide the best contextual information for understanding economic and social factors related to ceramic consumption in the eighteenth-century Anglo-America world. The Limehouse porcelain factory ultimately failed—an oft-told tale in both the porcelain and pottery industry. In some ways, its failure makes it a more tantalizing assignment for future research. In particular, the Limehouse story seems to share many parallels with the failed American china manufactory of Bonnin and Morris in Philadelphia. Only more research in the historical record can flesh out the stories of both porcelain factories. The Limehouse porcelain manufactory site report is an essential resource for those interested in the history of English porcelain. The report presents this important information in a clear and concise manner. The quality of the photographs and printing is of the highest order and should serve as a model for all archaeological publications. Most importantly, the archaeologists have presented their information in a timely and usable fashion that porcelain scholars will be sure to reference for years to come. Robert Hunter Editor, Ceramics in America 1. Bernard Watney, “Four Groups of Porcelain, Possibly Liverpool: Parts I and II,” English Ceramic Circle Transactions 4, no. 5 (1959): 13–25. David A. Furniss, J. Richard Wagner, and Judith Wagner. Adams Ceramics: Staffordshire Potters and Pots, 1779–1998. Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer, 1999. 336 pp.; over 1,250 bw and color illus., appendices, bibliography, index. $79.95. The Adams family of Staffordshire potters was an important force in the British ceramic industry from the late eighteenth century until well into the twentieth. Although other authors have researched the Adams family (e.g., Turner1 and Nicholls2), this is the first comprehensive study. Adams Ceramics: Staffordshire Potters and Pots, 1779–1998 combines a scholarly treatment of the history of the Adams potteries with a catalog of pieces and price guide. Using historical research, oral interviews, and ceramic products, the authors trace the history of the family and the various factories from the late eighteenth century and provide extensive footnotes. Because the Adams factories focused for much of their existence on exporting the bulk of their production to the Americas and other foreign markets, the collaboration of authors from different geographic backgrounds is a key factor in the success of this study. David Furniss, who has been collecting and researching Adams ceramics in England for over a quarter of a century, provided a fairly comprehensive picture of Adams products for the period 1780 to 1835, but found few pieces in Britain dating from 1835 to 1900. American antique dealers Richard and Judith Wagner filled in the gap by tracing Adams products made for sale in the Americas, particularly transfer-printed wares and “Persian painted” wares. Adams Ceramics is one of the few books that thoroughly treats a specific company’s full range of products for both the home and export markets. As a rule, museums and reference materials that focus on the finest examples of a factory’s production, ignoring the majority of the wares actually made by that factory, are of little use to an archaeologist trying to interpret the ceramics excavated from an isolated farmstead in the Missouri Ozarks or to a collector who is unable to afford the most expensive pieces. Staffordshire potters often made completely different lines of wares for sale to the home and to the export markets. Some lines (e.g., white granite, “ironstone” in collectors’ parlance) were often so distinct that English collectors, ceramic historians, and museums, for example, were sometimes unfamiliar with wares exported to the Americas because they did not appear on the home market. The material presented in chapter 1 is essential background for the rest of the book, although some of it is repeated in subsequent chapters. The authors trace the fortunes of the various branches of the family through the 1960s, when Williams Adams & Sons was taken over by Josiah Wedgwood Ltd. A useful chart of the male lineage of Adams master potters helps the reader keep track of all the master potters christened William. Information is provided on Adams family history, the various independent factories that they built or maintained, and the products for which they are best known. The authors’ allusions to world economic history help the reader understand the fates of the Adams potteries as well as the rise and denouement of the Staffordshire ceramic industry in general. Chapters 2 and 3, “Patterns and Context 1779–1917” and “Patterns and Context 1918–1998,” comprise the majority of the book. In these chapters, the authors discuss the wares produced under a particular Adams master potter, primarily within the contexts of family and economic history. They then present an alphabetically arranged catalog of the various patterns that were made during the period in question (primarily on earthenware, but on small amounts of bone china items as well). Highlights of the pattern catalogs include later Adams products, particularly transfer-printed series such as “Birds of America,” “Currier and Ives,” “Dickens,” Dr. Syntax revivals, and “Cries of London,” and twentieth-century patterns on Micratex and Titian Ware bodies. The years covered in chapter 3 are a somewhat neglected period in ceramic history, and the authors are to be commended for not simply focusing on the early Adams years. The catalogs are amply and beautifully illustrated, for the most part in color. The quality of the photographic reproductions in the book is in almost all cases excellent (however, it is unfortunate that many of the photographs included a clear plate stand; for example, the cover art on the dust jacket). In many cases, the maker’s mark for an item is shown alongside it. Most images are photographs of flatware, with occasional images from company pattern books or advertisements, and a few engravings used as source prints for transfer-printed patterns. In addition to the pattern name, catalog entries usually include measurements, descriptions of each item and applicable mark or marks, the factory with which the vessel is associated, and the date range for that factory. The dates given for a particular pattern are based on factory marks alone, although more specific dates from documents, archaeological sites (shipwrecks), and temporally sensitive styles are occasionally referenced. The reader attempting to define dates for a pattern is cautioned to refer to the text for additional information, instead of simply using the mark date. Each illustrated catalog entry incorporates price information, apparently current as of the late 1990s. It was not clear how these prices were derived, nor how they were tied to the condition of the vessel. Including cost information in a book that could have a considerable shelf life seems counter productive—what will happen when the prices are outdated? Separate price guides often accompany a book specializing in collector literature; with this strategy the publisher has the opportunity to print price updates from time to time. An abbreviation key like that in chapter 4 would have been useful as well for chapters 2 and 3. Additionally, it is not always clear whether or not a pattern or color name has been assigned or attributed by collectors or was actually one used by the manufacturer. The authors allude to the difference between collectors’ and manufacturers’ terms on page 23, but this difference should have been stated explicitly at the outset. Some entries in the catalog are not really patterns at all, but the names of ceramic bodies, such as “white granite,” “Calyx Ware,” and “Royal Ivory,” or specific lines, such as “Toys.” The authors were no doubt faced with the dilemma of where to include this information, but the catalog could simply have been titled more broadly. By and large, the authors’ use of terminology follows preferred usage by contemporary ceramic historians, but their use of charger for platter, teapoy for tea cannister, white graniteware for white granite, and washstand set for toilet ware is open to question. There are a few gaps in the authors’ knowledge of ceramic technology, e.g., their use of “transfer” for what is more properly referred to as a decal or lithotransfer, and the use of “overglaze decorated” to refer to bat-printed decoration. Adams souvenir and commemorative patterns are presented in alphabetical order by importer and series in chapter 4. The best-documented years of souvenir and commemorative production were the mid-1890s through the 1960s. The discussion of the Adams’ relationship with the American importer John H. Roth & Co. is a fascinating look at this aspect of the ceramic industry, which was often based on personal relationships between entrepreneurs but fraught with conflicts of interest inherent in the dealings between importer and manufacturer. In chapter 5, the authors catalog known jasper, stoneware, basalt, and parian products of the Adams potteries in chronological order. Many of the pieces are from the Adams’ family collection and the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery. Particularly interesting is the discussion of the reuse of Adams’ eighteenth-century jasper molds in the twentieth century. Chapter 6 is an amply illustrated discussion of characteristic makers’ marks and backstamps used by the Adams factories, from the earliest impressed marks to printed marks used through the 1950s. Useful information is provided in the five appendices included in the book: A, “Nineteenth century series”; B, “Adams and Meir Pattern Numbers” (John Meir bought Adams’ Greengates Pottery in 1822); C, “The Scriven Report” (on child labor in the potteries); D, “Institutional and Hotel Ware” (by Ewart H. Edge); and E, “Museums with Adams’ Holdings.” Inexplicably, the latter included some but not all the institutions mentioned in the stoneware section of chapter 5. The bibliography is extensive, but not all items listed as primary sources are documents produced by participants in an event or by eyewitnesses (e.g., bills of lading or invoices). It is unfortunate that the book does not contain a more thorough index, although the alphabetical pattern arrangement makes it easy to find patterns with known names. This is one of the most scholarly books yet published by Schiffer, which is due in large part to the care taken by the authors themselves in writing and compiling their manuscript. Although the book could have benefited from more editorial support from the publisher, there are really very few errors given its length and scope. Adams Ceramics should be on the shelf of anyone interested in English ceramics, regardless of whether they are collectors, dealers, appraisers, historical archaeologists, or museum staff. A book such as this allows the reader to do much more than simply identify a piece. For those who are history-minded, production and distribution are put into the context of world politics and economics. For those primarily interested in the pots, it is possible to learn about the range of shapes and decoration on Adams ware, what was deemed appropriate for various export markets, and stylistic influences and revivals. As noted on the dust cover, the “combined knowledge” of the authors truly “makes this the Adams book for all time.” Teresita Majewski Statistical Research, Inc. 1. William Turner, ed., William Adams, An Old English Potter (London and Syracuse, N.Y.: Chapman and Hall and The Keramic Studio, 1904). 2. Robert Nicholls, comp., Ten Generations of a Potting Family (London: Percy Lund, 1931). Andrew McGarva. Country Pottery: Traditional Earthenware of Britain. London: A & C Black, 2000. Preface by Michael Casson. 128 pp.; 66 bw and 105 color illus., glossary, bibliography, index. $60.00/£30.00. Although common earthenware may be Britain’s “hidden treasure,” it has yet to fire the imagination of most museums and collectors. Overshadowed by whitewares with colorful decorations and elaborate forms, neglected and uncelebrated, it is sought only by the few who appreciate its sturdy, utilitarian beauty. “A continuation of tradition is less noticed than innovation or change,” notes author Andrew McGarva (p. 12). In the diverse history of British ceramics, these wares rightly hold the lowest rank, for since the Middle Ages all British pottery types have sprung from these utilitarian earthenwares. As the country folk traditions of everyday brewing, cheese making, and baking declined steadily during the last century, so did the demand for common earthenwares. By the mid-twentieth century the true country way of life in Britain had vanished forever, and with it the country potters and their earthenware pots. Makers of common earthenware over the centuries have rarely been the subject of notoriety. Contemporary records from the United States show that important as they were to their neighbors in providing wares necessary for everyday life, pottery makers could be considered a nuisance, with muddy yards, dangerous clay pits, and ever-smoking kilns.1 Perhaps because of this perceived “nuisance” status, the inner workings and details of the everyday production in these shops were rarely recorded. Indeed, many individual potters compounded this lack of history by keeping their techniques and glazes a secret. As a result, ceramic research today often employs conjecture or the author’s “best guess” as to exactly how these items were made. A book has finally appeared that provides us with the missing link between modern potting methods and those techniques of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries often considered lost. Written from the unique perspective of a working potter, Andrew McGarva, the book thoroughly covers early pottery processes from training and wages to the eventual distribution and sale of pots produced. Michael Casson’s preface accurately acknowledges the author’s thorough understanding of his craft and the skills of traditional potters. The tiniest details, often overlooked by the casual observer, such as reaching for a “grab” of clay for throwing, the length of the wareboard, or the mixing and application of slips and glazes, are described in a way only a potter could. From the dedication to the final index entry, the foundation and strength of this book is clearly in its remarkable photographs. The inclusion of these photos makes this book indispensable to anyone interested in the study of common earthenware, not only of Britain but of Europe and the United States as well. This archive of photographs gives us an extremely rare glimpse into the shops, the yards, and even the kilns of potteries, which had all but disappeared by the mid-twentieth century. A major inspiration for the book was the 1965 film, Isaac Button, Country Potter, by Robert Fornier and John Anderson. Chapter 6 is dedicated to this lone potter who worked the Soil Hill pottery from 1947 to 1964. The shop was located at Holmfield, between Halifax and Keighley, in Yorkshire. Typical of potters in shops making utilitarian ware, Mr. Button honed his skills and techniques to an amazing level. His standard bread crock required twenty-four pounds of clay and could be thrown in seventy seconds. Anyone who has centered and thrown even ten pounds of clay will quickly acknowledge that Button was a very skilled potter. The twelve chapters cover all aspects of production and include clay preparation, tools, glazing, kiln setting, kiln types, and firing. Chapter 2 on training and wages begins by describing a fourteen-year-old’s apprenticeship in the 1880s. Working a minimum of twelve hours a day, six days a week, a young lad could look forward to earning up to ten pence a week during the last of a five to eight year indenture. The big payoff was to become a journeyman. Moving on to another pottery, a journeyman enjoyed a change of scenery, and was introduced to new styles and techniques as well. Here he learned the importance of a high production rate, for all throwers were paid by how much they produced. The payment system employed the use of a “cast” of pots. The number of pots per cast was determined by how much time was required to throw them. A cast would be sixty to seventy three-inch flowerpots, but only six twelve-inch pots. A good example is given of this system in operation before the First World War. Throwers at Fremington were paid four pence ha’ penny per cast of sixty small flowerpots, which included making up their own balls of clay in preparation. This is where speed and dexterity paid off. A good thrower could produce two casts (120 pots) per hour, and finish the day with 1,000 pots drying on the racks. A few years later, with the introduction of the jolly machine (a machine in which a spinning mold forms the exterior of a hollow ware and a template shapes the interior), one man would be expected to turn 4,000 three-and one-half-inch pots in a day’s time. Looking back from this age of carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive motion ailments, we may well wonder at these men who quietly plied their trade for forty or more years before slacking the pace and seeking retirement. Although we see it through the author’s rather romanticized vision, we can still imagine the mind-numbing tedium and back-breaking labor of this work. The shops where these men worked were often dark and damp and subject to the ever-present danger of lead poisoning. The author reveals not only production techniques, but also methods of digging and preparing clay, using a roulette wheel to decorate freshly thrown pots, throwing large pots in two sections, and unique methods for lifting large pots off the wheel. Throwing pots directly on the wheel head (as opposed to using removable bats) poses a great challenge when the time comes to remove a particularly large piece. This problem was solved at Soil Hill, as well as at other shops, by the use of a “lifting off stick” or “cow’s rib.” This beautifully simple tool was a slightly curved flat piece of wood about a foot long. While the hands went around the far side of the pot, the stick bridged the forearms and supported the near side. The pot was then cleanly lifted and moved without distortion and could be placed immediately on a wareboard for drying, saving at least one step in dealing with the throwing bat. Another trick for lifting bottle forms was to place a ball of clay over the mouth of the pot, sealing in air pressure which supports the piece from the inside and reduces the risk of deformation. Photographs illuminate many of the heretofore obscure details of this ware’s production. In the final chapter, Andrew McGarva takes a quick look at contemporary potters who, while not making reproductions of old pots, have been influenced by them and the men who made them. Here the author encourages us to “enjoy what is available today, rather than dwell on what has already gone” (p. 112). This sentiment may leave the modern-day antiquary a bit cold, but in truth modern pottery is the accumulated end product of all ceramics that have gone before. Although a map is provided showing the locations of old country pottery sites that are mentioned in the text, an accompanying list of these shops with the names of the potters who worked in them and the dates of their operations would have been helpful to the reader. Andrew McGarva has given us an important body of information in Country Pottery. Invaluable to the working potter, it also gives collectors a wide range of products to seek perimeters in which to conduct their search, and the student of ceramics a rich overview of the history of this common earthenware. Possibly the strongest point made by this book is that through the study and collection of these wonderful old pots, we can come to a new understanding and appreciation of “all makers of pots and pans; past, present, and future.” In your library or on your coffee table, this book bears proud testament to a humble tradition. Greg Shooner Shooner American Redware Oregonia, Ohio 1. Rose Marie Springman, Around Mason, Ohio: A Story of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, Ohio: C. J. Krehbiel, 1982), p. 43. Regina Lee Blaszczyk. Imagining Consumers: Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning. Studies in Industry and Society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. xiii+380 pp., 9 color plates, 51 b/w illustrations, notes, essay on sources, index. $45.95 hardbound; $22.50 paperback. I was glad when Regina Blaszczyk’s Imagining Consumers: Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning was published because I had found a wealth of data on the Trenton pottery industry in her dissertation on which it is based. The book’s focus on the market and consumers is a welcome relief from connoisseurship. Connoisseurs’ definitions of beauty deny, states Blaszezyk, “the historical significance of commonplace items, the building blocks of popular culture” (p. 273). I can appreciate a mass-market paradigm that embraces common wares such as Fiesta that archaeologists and historians of popular culture cannot ignore.1 The case study technique examines product design, production, and marketing using the companies and products as units of analysis. Blaszczyk points out significant technological, economic, and cultural variables affecting the American ceramics and glass market under conditions of increased competition and falling prices. The studies range from flexible batch production as refined by Wedgwood during the late eighteenth century to the mass production of the twentieth century. The cases provide contrasting insights on the American market during a century of growth and marked technological change. The process in which factory managers and art directors imagined their consumers was sometimes successful, as in the cases of Homer Laughlin’s Fiesta and Corning Glass Works’ Corning wares, and other times less successful, as in the cases of Corning’s Pyrex and Kohler’s Color wares. The central concept is that of fashion intermediaries providing feedback on product design and consumer wants. In the 1860s these fashion intermediaries included wholesale merchants, urban retailers, country store owners, and peddlers. Twentieth-century fashion intermediaries were designers, engineers, retailer buyers, advertising consultants, and home economists. One of the fashion intermediaries for Homer Laughlin was Frederick Hurten Rhead, art director for the company from 1927–1942, who perceived a diverse American market stratified by class and who designed wares to suit this market. The English factory Wedgwood produced decorated creamware for the upper classes and plain creamware for the middle classes. As Rhead stated in 1931, “There is more than one personal taste” (p. 133). Taking an opposite view were art historians who believed in a unified aesthetic and tastemakers who saw only one customer: “a middlebrow who could be taught to appreciate upscale lines” (p. 251). By the 1920s, when working- and middle-class women comprised more than eighty percent of buyers of mass-manufactured goods, the consumers that many manufacturers tried to visualize were female. Blaszczyk uses data from a wide variety of sources, particularly trade journals, industry publications, business records, and managerial oral histories. The superb documentation is thought-provoking in its detail. The dissertation’s extensive footnotes are retained for the book, and the “Essay on Sources” is particularly useful for those researching American ceramics of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One of the author’s strengths is her ability to highlight technological changes in the narrative, such as the 1930s shift in decorative techniques from decals to painting, silk screening, and bright solid-colored glazes. The black-and-white and color illustrations help to bring the narrative to life and benefit from the author’s familiarity with not only company archives but also archives at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, Dun & Bradstreet, Hagley Museum and Library, Winterthur Museum Library, the East Liverpool Museum of Ceramics, and other public and private institutions. Chapters 2 through 5 deal primarily with ceramics. Chapter 2 describes Trenton china decorator Jesse Dean’s experimentation with ceramic decals and photoceramics, china mania following the Centennial Exhibition, and the struggle between American potters and importers. Chapter 3 covers decal aesthetics and colored clays and glazes in the context of Homer Laughlin’s and the Sebring family’s competition for the mass retail trade, such as mail-order houses and five-and-dime stores. Chapter 4 describes the development of Homer Laughlin’s Fiesta and other modern-style wares. Chapter 5 describes Kohler’s attempt to persuade consumers to buy their colored sanitary plumbing lines, complicated by quality control problems with color matchings. The collaboration of Josiah Wedgwood and Thomas Bentley, the only English case, is treated briefly in the introduction and was not part of the author’s dissertation. Additional chapters discuss the American table glass industry (chapter 1), the development of Pyrex ware (chapter 6), and the fortunes of the Sebring companies, Homer Laughlin, and Corning Glass Works in the Baby Boom era (chapter 7). My criticisms are minor. At times when I became lost in the details of a company’s history, I longed for synthesis, but this may not be a fair criticism of the case study approach, particularly since these are so well grounded in historical context. The addition of the Wedgwood case to the book helps to clarify the origins of the American manufacturers’ factory structure and marketing methods, but this case is not documented with the depth of the other cases, making its placement in the introduction appropriate. It is my pleasure to call this book to the attention of an interdisciplinary Ceramics in America audience. Fiesta and Corning Ware are important milestones in American tableware history as is the rise of casual dining in the twentieth-century United States. The case study approach lends itself to browsing through the book a chapter at a time. Even if you can’t stand the sight of Fiesta ware, this book will teach you something about making and selling ceramics in America. Amy C. Earls Ceramics in America 1. Regina Lee Blaszczyk, “Imagining Consumers: Manufacturers and Markets in Ceramics and Glass, 1865–1965” (Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, Newark, 1995). Those interested in the post-Civil War American market will want this dissertation for its chapter on the Homer Laughlin factory’s conversion into the world’s first mass-production tableware factory and for the data tables not used in the book.