Friday, August 13, 2010

A Mending we will go!

Yesterday Anne told us how much she loves to mend artifacts and that we have had many to mend from the excavations at the Burch House. So...here's a new old set of dishes from the site! It's a matching transfer print pearlware plate and mug! This mending job was quite easy as the two were only broken in half. Part of the mug is missing, maybe we'll find it again, maybe we won't.

There is a maker's mark on the back of the plate reading "Lanthus C. & W.K.H.". Here's a picture:

Unfortunately we have yet to find a match online. I believe Kelley might know the answer but we'll have to see if she chimes in now that she is off at William and Mary.

And of course if anyone else out there can identify the mark, we would be very appreciative.

**Burch House Fieldwork** We will be at Burch House on Monday next week (8/16). See you there!


- Peter

2 comments:

Kelley said...

If I recall correctly I was unable to find any information on the "Lanthus C" portion of the mark, but did have some success with the "C & WKH." These are intitials, but I only know that the "H" stands for Harvey. A quick search showed that these wares were made in Longton, Staffordshire, from roughly 1835-1853. I know even less about these particular pieces, though the pattern seems to be a general "oriental" scene, probably meant to invoke images of a country such as Turkey.

Jim said...

The mark on the back of the plate is partial. It should read Ailanthus (a genus of tree native to southern Asia), and it represents the name of the pattern.

As the analysis progresses, we hope to associate this dinner set with a particular household that occupied the site.