"For the kitchen or nursery”: The Promotion of Willow and Other Common Transfer-printed Ceramics

Penny Crook

"For the kitchen or nursery”: The Promotion of Willow and Other Common Transfer-printed Ceramics

Part of the An archaeology of colonial consumption: Sydney trade and material culture, 1788–1901 project

Year: 2019

Summary

This paper explores the promotion of ‘Willow’ and other common transfer-printed patterns in 19th-century trade catalogues and Australian colonial newspaper advertisements. These ‘usual suspects’ (‘Willow’, ‘Asiatic Pheasant’, ‘Rhine’ amongst others) appear in large numbers on historical archaeological sites across the globe. We know from select trade catalogues and ad hoc advertisements that by 1880s, ‘Willow’ and ‘Asiatic Pheasant’, along with Band-and-line wares, were sold as dinnersets ‘for the kitchen and nursery’ and were cheaper than plain white wares. If this were to be accepted as a widespread phenomenon, what might that mean for their interpretation in historical archaeological assemblages? Should these ‘common prints’ be isolated as a special group of analysis? If so, how do we determine what is ‘common’ in each local market?

Cite this Record

"For the kitchen or nursery”: The Promotion of Willow and Other Common Transfer-printed Ceramics. Penny Crook. Presented at Australasian Society for Historical Archaeology (ASHA), Port Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia. 2019 ( tDAR id: 455191)