Beachcombing

The New England town in which I live has a rich maritime history. Two hundred years ago, ships departed the harbor for The Orient (as Asia was then called), and returned with spices, teas, and porcelain. The Chinese invented the process of making porcelain and rather selfishly wouldn't share the recipe with anyone. They did, however, do a brisk trade in it with Europe and America. Porcelain brought back from China was called "Chinese export porcelain." It was expensive and highly coveted, a status symbol among the wealthy in Europe. It took Europeans about a couple of hundred years to finally figure out how to duplicate it, though in the meantime they came up with a reasonable alternative, one that was softer than the Chinese stuff and was called "soft-paste" porcelain (as opposed to the Chinese "hard-paste"). Blue and white hand-painted porcelain was ubiquitous in China, and was the most prevalent type of Chinese export porcelain in the 18th century.

Some people like to collect shells when they go to the beach, others beach glass. When I go beachcombing, I like to collect pottery shards. The beach along the harbor in town is a great source for them, especially at low tide. Although the wharves are long gone, I can imagine ships docking at them on their return from Asia and Europe, the crews unloading crates of imported goods and storing them at the Customs House across the street. The two shards above were both recovered from the harbor in my town. They're in the style of Chinese export porcelain but are probably European. I know the second one is definitely English because the back of the shard partially reveals the manufacturer's name on it, and the word "Ltd." which indicates it was a British manufacturer. It's a great example of transferware, a process of decoration not dissimilar to those rub-off transfers used to decorate Easter eggs. Although transferware was invented in the mid-18th century, the increased sophistication and fine detail of this design dates it to the 19th century. Before transferware, 18th century porcelain was hand-painted, with broad brushstrokes and not as much detail. How do I know all this? I used to work for a British woman who was a European pottery and porcelain curator at a museum. She was as mad as a March hare, walking around the office looking for her glasses when all the time they were perched on her forehead. But by God, she knew her porcelain! She could look at a teapot and tell you it was late-18th century English Staffordshire lustreware, and that the coat of arms on it were of King George IV of England while he was still Prince of Wales.

Pottery shards leave so much to the imagination. Who had them last, when they were intact dishes or teacups? How did they get into the sea? Were they thrown overboard because they had broken during the voyage back to America? Were they from a shipwreck? Did they take 200 years to wash up onto the shore? Are my hands the first to touch them in centuries? These pottery shards are a connection to the past. I keep them on my dresser in a pottery dish with a mermaid on it, new pottery holding old pottery. As though things have come full circle.