Ivor Noel Hume. If These Pots Could Talk: Collecting 2,000 Years of British Household Pottery.

Ivor Noel Hume. If These Pots Could Talk: Collecting 2,000 Years of British Household Pottery. xxii+454 pages, colour & b&w figures. 2001. Milwaukee (WI):Chipstone Foundation; 1-58465-161-X hardback $46. The ceramic collection catalogued here was created by Audrey &Ivor Noel Hume Ivor Noel Hume is a British born archaeologist and author. He studied at Farmingham College and St. Lawrence College in England before joining the staff of Guildhall Museum in London in 1949. . It was Audrey's death in 1993 which made Ivorrealize how much information about the pots would be lost if not writtendown. As with so many private collections, it was not then catalogued. It was created over the last 50 years as a teaching collection, andis to go, complete, to the American Chipstone Foundation so that it cancontinue in that role. The Chipstone Foundation, and the donor, wantedthe pots to be documented as fully as possible, very good museumpractice. This very big book is the result--470 pages, huge numbers ofcolour photographs, and lots of text. Ivor Noel Hume apologizes for theresulting text: `If therefore, you want to find a single word to disrobethese chapters, the kindest may be discursive' (original italic). The book is indeed discursive, but none the worse for that. NoelHume writes about how he developed theories, but even more honestlyabout how they worked out when more evidence came to light. Makingmethods, and parallels for shapes and decoration in other materials arediscussed, along with the uses of the pots. Digging in London in theearly 1950s is well evoked, and now seems very historic. The sub-title is `... 2,000 years of British ... pottery', andalthough the Noel Humes lived and worked in America from 1957, thecollection all comes from England. The book is a history of the study ofpottery over the last 50 years, and of the collecting of pottery overthe same period, wide-ranging but with close focus on some areas. Goss n. 1. Gorse. china is a surprising inclusion, as are Royal Commemoratives, but thebulk of the book (and the collection) covers one of the most interestingperiods for ceramics--mid 18th-mid 19th century. There are more of thefiner wares--earthenwares are few and far between, and tend to be themore elaborate pots like fuddling cups or decorated wares. Stoneware stoneware,hard pottery made from siliceous paste, fired at high temperature to vitrify (make glassy) the body. Stoneware is heavier and more opaque than porcelain and differs from terra-cotta in being nonporous and nonabsorbent. ,creamware creamwareCream-coloured English earthenware made in the late 18th century. It was designed as a substitute for Chinese porcelain. In 1762 Josiah Wedgwood achieved commercial success with this modestly priced utilitarian ware; restrained designs and elegant transfer printing and especially pearlware are the best represented types, butthere is a quick canter through Roman and medieval, slowing up from the17th century through to the 20th. Most of the pottery ismiddle-of-the-range, with a little porcelain and virtually none of theplain earthenwares which make up the bulk of archaeological finds. Thebook is almost as much about collecting as it is about pots, and therange of wares buyable then is unbelievable to anyone born later. Thecollecting ranged from foraging for Roman pots on Upchurch Marshes tobuying the most amazing a��maze?v. a��mazed, a��maz��ing, a��maz��esv.tr.1. To affect with great wonder; astonish. See Synonyms at surprise.2. Obsolete To bewilder; perplex.v.intr. 17th-century delftware delftware.The earliest delftware was a faience, a heavy, brown earthenware with opaque white glaze and polychrome decoration, made in the late 16th cent. Some of the earliest imitations of Chinese and Japanese porcelain were made at Delft in the 17th cent. and seemingly every typeof stoneware and fine earthenware from the 17th to the 20th centuries(along with some porcelain). The sections on the elaborate blue prints on pearlware in theperiod about 1800, and on stoneware bottles and elaborate spirit flasksof the 19th century were especially interesting, and the good quality ofthe illustrations throughout adds to the pleasure. Reasons forcollecting the pots help too, along with frank admissions about waninginterest in some types of pots. The background to commemoratives forexample, is well laid out. The book will be of interest to all involved with post-medievalpottery, or indeed the history of collecting. It somehow seems veryAmerican in style of publication, which sits oddly with the Britishnessof the subject. In his introduction Noel Hume writes `Even if you gainnothing more from these pages than vicariously vi��car��i��ous?adj.1. Felt or undergone as if one were taking part in the experience or feelings of another: read about mountain climbing and experienced vicarious thrills.2. sharing the joy of thehunt and the stimulus of looking past the pots to the people who madeand lived with them, I shall be content--more than content. I shall beas happy as the proverbial clam!' He can be happy--he does sharethe excitement of collecting (and indeed of research) with the reader.