Search for an elusive but important potter leads to St. Thomas Point

John Bartlam (d.1781), America’s first creamware potter, was a hard man to track down. After four decades of searching, however, archaeologist Stanley South of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology finally trailed him to St. Thomas Point on the Cainhoy Peninsula. There, in 1992, in a new residential development, he conducted two archaeological digs searching for Bartlam’s pottery and kiln. South didn’t find the kiln but he did uncover enough Bartlam pottery to conclude that pottery was probably manufactured on the site and the kiln was probably located nearby. His findings from both digs are combined in John Bartlam: Staffordshire in Carolina, which was published in 2004.

Bartlam was the most important potter of South Carolina and arguably the most important of the southeastern states, South contends. Pottery scholars knew of him from the letters of the preeminent English potter Josiah Wedgewood, whose creamware pottery line was adopted by Queen Charlotte for her table and thereafter called Queen’s Ware. Wedgewood was appointed the Queen’s Potter. He had refined the process for making the cream colored pottery that was produced in Staffordshire, a county that was the center of pottery production in England by 1740.

Queen’s Ware quickly became the most popular pottery in England and throughout Europe. Staffordshire pottery, including Queen’s Ware and other Wedgewood lines, was exported to the English colonies of North America in what became a very lucrative trade.

John Bartlam had worked for Wedgewood for 12 years when he decided to leave and to establish his own pottery in the colonies. He probably had been involved in a search for kaolin clay for Wedgewood and other potters and learned that it could be found in Carolina, near Charleston. With reports, also, of a ready clientele there, he set sail, with his family, in 1763. He located the clay in the St. Thomas parish settlement of Cain Hoy, on the north bank of the Wando River. He opened his pottery there in 1765.

Bartlam’s advertisements in the South Carolina Gazette boasted that he could produce pottery as fine as that made in England, in all of the popular English styles but at less cost to the colonists. He also advertised in England for pottery workers to come to Charleston and work for him. Josiah Wedgewood’s letters express his concern that the response to Bartlam’s ads could leave the English potteries with a labor shortage and that Bartlam’s wares could capture the pottery market in the colonies.

By 1769, Bartlam was able to mortgage 500 dozen pieces of earthenware to further finance his pottery and he was advertising for young African Americans to work as apprentices. By 1771, he had moved the pottery to Charleston and was making Queen’s Ware in a location on Old Church Street, and advertising again for six apprentices. Because he had found the right clay, knew the techniques and had extraordinary skills as a potter, Bartlam did succeed in manufacturing pottery that was virtually indistinguishable from Wedgewood’s, including Queen’s Ware, Tortoiseshell ware and other popular lines.

***image1***By 1773, however, his factory had failed financially and his foreman, William Ellis, went to Salem, NC, where he taught Rudolph Christ to make Tortoiseshell ware as well as salt-glazed stoneware. Bartlam regrouped and moved his factory to Camden. By 1774 he was again shipping Queen’s Ware to Charleston. In 1781, Bartlam died and his property was sold for debts. The property included a large quantity of warehoused pottery that was sold off locally.

Stanley South’s search for Bartlam began in the 1960s, in excavations at Bethabara and Old Salem, North Carolina, where he found examples of the type of creamware that Ellis had taught Christ to make in 1773. His discovery caused something of a sensation at the time because, despite the fact that Bartlam had produced a large volume of pottery and successfully marketed it throughout South Carolina, no identifiable whole pieces of it had survived. None of the experts had seen examples of pottery made by Bartlam and Ellis.

South found more pottery fragments probably by Bartlam in 1969, in excavations at Ninety Six and Camden in South Carolina. Then in 1979, George Terry, now the vice provost for University Libraries and Collections at USC, researched some documents about the factory and visited St. Thomas Point, where bulldozing had begun for a road to a public boat dock. There he found a number of creamware shards indicating that the site of Bartlam’s kiln was probably nearby.

Based on the information Terry had gathered, South visited the site in 1990 and asked the owner for permission to dig. His initial request was denied, probably out of fear that any discovery would jeopardize development of the property. Finally, however, he was told he could approach the new owners of the lots where he wanted to dig. After obtaining funding, in 1992, he approached Larry and Sylvia Amman and the owners of two other houses and received their permission to conduct archaeological digs on their properties. During two field seasons in 1992 and 1993, South and his assistants uncovered more than 20,000 artifacts connected with the importation and manufacture of refined earthenware.

The excavations and analyses revealed that Bartlam produced pottery of six main types, with different glazes and decorations creating many subtypes: cream colored ware, tortoiseshell wares, manganese-glazed wares, pumpkin-colored wares and lead-glazed red earthenware. He also produced a high-fired white ware with cobalt blue designs that was an attempt to make porcelain. He used a finite set of glazes to achieve different colors and effects, and his decorative patterns included ring and dot, barleycorn and dot, diaper and basket. Although mass production techniques were starting to be used elsewhere, Bartlam’s pottery was hand-turned, and it shows Bartlam to have been a potter of great skill.

The heaviest concentrations of pottery shards and other artifacts in the dig area were found in what were apparently a house and a well. South concluded that the residents threw their refuse out of the house and also disposed of refuse in the well.

Along with fragments of Bartlam’s pottery the team also found fragments of Native American pottery, prehistoric Native American pottery and colonoware/colono-Indian ware. South maintains that while the later is usually attributed to African-Americans, it is often difficult to distinguish from the pottery of Native Americans. These findings suggest that Native Americans had a presence in the area over a long period of time and that African-Americans who worked in Bartlam’s factory also made pottery in their own style for personal use.

Although he is disappointed at not finding the kiln at the Cainhoy site, South said he doesn’t plan to do any more excavations in the area. He does, however, urge property owners to be alert for pottery pieces on their land

Now 77 years old, South has no plans to retire. Over a 53-year career as a historical archaeologist in the field, he has conducted archeological excavations at Santa Elena (now a golf course at the Parris Island Marine base), Charles Towne Landing and Fort Moultrie, and developed a method for dating pottery shards that has become an industry standard. He recently published his autobiography, titled An Archaeological Evolution.