The Cost of Things

Platter, 1830–40
Staffordshire, England
Earthenware with transfer-printed and hand-painted decoration
Lent by the Chipstone Foundation 2000.51

1830–40
When first made, this platter had no market value at all. Instead, it was used as a sample piece that gave potential buyers a choice between the various decorative patterns that could be printed on platters and plates. As the factory began to use newer decorative borders, the platter lost its functional value.

Today

Nearly two hundred years later this unusual looking platter has gained a second life as a museum piece that offers ceramic scholars important insight into how nineteenth-century Staffordshire potters marketed their wares.

Chamber Pot, late 17th century
Somerset, England
Earthenware with slip decoration
Lent by the Chipstone Foundation 1999.7

Late 17th century
Before the age of modern plumbing, ceramic chamber pots were used as toilets. This example, however, was never usable. While it was being fired in the kiln, tiny pockets of moist air inside the clay expanded too quickly and caused the wall to explode. The hole made the chamber pot useless and the potter discarded it into the pottery’s waster pit.

Mid-twentieth century
The waster pit was discovered in the twentieth century in the town of Donyatt in Somerset, England. The chamber pot was excavated and carefully glued back together.

Today
For historians studying the potteries in Donyatt, this chamber pot is a rare intact survival of a kiln “waster.” The pot also documents the use of “feathered” slip decoration, a surprisingly elaborate design for such a utilitarian vessel.