By Kerry S. González
For our devoted followers, you may remember seeing a blog post back in 2015 on the creamware fragment below, found in 2013 during our Phase I survey of the Riverfront Park in Fredericksburg, Virginia (Photo 1). We are revisiting this piece because a match to the vessel was found during our 2019 Riverfront Park data recovery and an opportunity to showcase this rare circumstance was too good to pass up (Photo 2).
Photo 1: Creamware Fragment with Corinthian Column Capital and Shaft Recovered in 2013.
Photo 2: Creamware Fragment with Corinthian Column Shaft and Base (on right) Recovered in 2019.
These small fragments are a variety of ceramic called overglazed, printed creamware. Vessels of this type were popular beginning in the 1760s. The use of the decorative Corinthian column indicates it is a ‘classical ruins’ motif typical on bowls as well as trenchers/plates and was a direct reflection of the wholesale American adoption of the Classical Revival style beginning in the mid-eighteenth century (Kaktins 2015). According to the San Francisco Ceramics Circle Newsletter (2014), Italian painters were fond of incorporating ruins into scenes with then-contemporary architecture, a style known as “capricciohas” (San Francisco Ceramics Circle 2014). While the fragments recovered from Dovetail’s 2013 and 2019 excavations do not appear to incorporate contemporaneous architecture they nonetheless highlight the popularity of including ruins in decorative motifs.
The complete plate below illustrates the ‘classical ruins’ pattern and shows the Corinthian columns observed on the sherds recovered by Dovetail. While both of these fragments were recovered from within the interior of the identified 1780 brick duplex at 717–719 Sophia Street, they were recovered roughly 10 feet apart. This distribution highlights how artifacts move around after they are thrown away, particularly on urban sites where filling and earthmoving are fairly common.
Photo 3: Example of Full Vessel with ‘Corinthian Ruins’ Motif (The Fitzwilliam Museum 2019).
References:
The Fitzwilliam Museum
2019 Collection Explorer-Corinthian Ruins. Electronic document, https://webapps.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/explorer/index.php?qu=tin%20glazed&oid=11867, accesed July 2019.
San Francisco Ceramics Circle
2014 San Francisco Ceramic Circle: An Affiliate of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. Electronic document, https://sfceramic.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/2014.3-newsletter-March-2014.pdf,k accessed July 2019.
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