On both handmade and wheelthrown pots the bases were almost always modified in some way after the vessel had been formed. The reasons for this are that both methods of manufacture produce thick bases from which much clay could be removed to produce a lighter, more elegant vessel. It is unlikely that any of these modifications have any more functional motive, unlike the addition of feet.
The typical base on medieval cooking pots, tripod pitchers and 13th century jugs was sagging. This is a deliberate feature, rather than a function of the manufacturing method as has sometimes been claimed (Rackham, 1972, 4). The earliest vessels with sagging bases in the region are Chester-type ware cooking pots, which were wheelthrown but subsequently had their bases pushed outwards. Hand-wiping marks exist on all sagging bases, both inside and out, and there is no evidence for the use of a former (ie. an external mould into which the base was pressed). However, it is by no means certain that the use of such a former would leave distinctive traces on the vessel.
There are two main types of sagging base, reflecting differences in the manufacturing technique of the vessel itself. In the first there is not a sharp base angle, merely a change in profile. In this case the vessel was probably formed from a single lump of clay. In the second type the base angle is well defined, although the actual angle can vary from less than a right angle ('West Country vessels') to an extremely obtuse angle (on globular cooking pots and tripod pitchers). The wall thickness is invariably greater at the base angle than elsewhere. In this case the vessel is probably formed by coiling, the base being the flat slab from which the walls are built-up.
It is sometimes suggested that the sagging base had a practical value on cooking pots, which may be true, but one of the suggested reasons for having a sagging base is that this would reduce the effect of thermal expansion and contraction in cooking. This is unlikely, for there is certainly little evidence for those late and post-medieval cooking vessels which were made with flat bases having any more breakage around the base than earlier vessels.
Perhaps more reasonable explanations are that a sagging base would throw the flames more evenly around the pot or that the vessel would nestle better into a bed of embers. Whatever the original practical function of the technique it is clear that on tripod pitchers and jugs the technique was used mainly by force of habit since when ceramic cooking pots became less common, in the later medieval period, flat based jugs became the norm. D. A. Hinton suggests (pers. comm.) that this might conversely show that earlier medieval vessel bases were made on a former.
Rounded bases, with no base angle at all are extremely rare. Only two vessel forms have them, both produced in South East Wiltshire. The method of manufacture has not been determined. In the case of the S.E. Wiltshire cooking pots this is because scratch-marking has obscured the evidence, whilst on the tripod pitchers the main problem is the extreme rarity of substantially complete vessels (there is one from Winchester, one from Dublin and one, heavily restored, from Marlborough).
Flat bases are comparatively rare on medieval vessels but are the norm in the post-medieval period. Most show no obvious signs of tooling nor of the material on which the vessel was resting when wet.
Iberian Red Micaceous ware usually has a gravelled base. This may have been due to the vessel having been placed on a sanded surface to dry although the quantity of gravel found adhering to the base is higher than one would have expected. Frechen stoneware has looped cheesewire impressions on the base, as do some late Saxon wheelthrown vessels, although not those from the study region. Most other types have occasional parallel lines due to the use of a cheesewire in removing the vessel from the wheel. No handmade types with flat bases are known in the study region.
Thumbed bases are of several distinct types. The earliest use of thumb impressions around the base angle of a vessel is of 13th century date and the latest is of late 15th century date.
Continuous thumbing, with impressions overlapping one another, is present on Nash Hill jugs in the late 13th to early 14th century.
Continuous but separate thumb impressions are found around the bases of several jug types, such as Malvern Chase. This is probably the most common type in the region.
Discontinuous thumbing, or 'group thumbing', is known on Minety jugs in the late medieval period. Group thumbing is present on some Essex made jugs of late 13th and early 14th century date and is common on later medieval jugs in the London area (Mill Green ware, Pearce et al., forthcoming).
Ham Green and Worcester-type jugs have a quite distinct variant of the thumbed base in which the base angle is actually frilled between the thumb and forefinger to form a 'piecrust'. In many cases it can be seen that this is formed from an added strip of clay, although it is possible that some are made from an extra thick wall at the base angle. A similar technique is used on Siegburg drinking jugs of the 14th century as well as on earlier Rhenish red-painted and ash-glazed vessels (Reineking-Von Boch, 1971, for example, Nos.55-6, Nos. 86-95; Beckmann, 1974, nos 26-32, 44-50, 56- 156). The latest types to have this frilled base are Raeren stoneware drinking jugs and their English copies, some of which are known in the region. It is not known whether these Rhenish vessels have applied frills or not.
It has recently been noted that a few vessels from Eastern England have applied bases, luted to the inside of the vessel. it has been suggested that these might have been necessary to correct some fault in the original base, for example if it was too thin (Hayfield, 1980). The technique has not yet been identified on vessels in the region.
The term 'recessed base' is used here to define a particular type of foot-ring base in which the vessel is thrown with a thick base which is then scooped-out, usually with a knife or similar tool but possibly sometimes with the fingers. The technique is particularly common on London-type ware, from the late 12th to the early 14th centuries, but is also found in the region, for example on Hereford A7b jugs and Nash Hill jugs.
A distinctive method of base treatment is present on Northern French jugs in the late 12th and 13th centuries. Several cordons and ridges are produced on the vessel on the wheel. The same feature is present on London-type jugs of the early 13th century but has not been noted elsewhere in the region.
It is difficult to produce a neat base angle on the wheel using the fingers alone and therefore small tools were probably used to pare away the clay at the base. The exact nature of the tools used is uncertain; bone, wood or metal would all produce the same effect on the clay.
The most common type of tooled base is roughly square in profile with a concave moulding on the upper side of the square. This type is present from the 15th century on Tudor Green vessels and from the 16th century is produced in the region, on Cistercian type cups. The same method is used to produce the bases on tin-glazed ware albarellos and most Staffordshire/Bristol 17th and 18th century hollow wares.
The bases of Cologne, Frechen and Westerwald stoneware drinking jugs and tankards are usually decorated with complex mouldings. It is likely that these were applied using a template (and certainly on Westerwald stoneware the 'chuttering' that a template would make is visible on the walls of tankards and chamberpots). The technique is not used locally until the early 18th century, when Staffordshire stoneware tankards have this type of base. The template base is not to be confused with a turned base. The former is produced whilst the vessel is on the wheel whilst the latter is produced by removing the vessel from the wheel, allowing it to dry then returning it to the wheel upside down. It is then possible to use the wheel-head as a chuck and to lathe- turn the vessel. Using this method complex shapes can be produced and a much thinner wall can be obtained. The technique is not known in the region, except on tin-glazed vessels until the early 18th century, when it was used extensively on Staffordshire white salt-glazed stoneware (the technique is described by Brears, 1971, 123).
On tin-glazed wares the turned base is found in the 13th century on Andalusian lustreware. Two main forms were produced: the foot-ring which varied in depth but was normally about 10mm deep and the upkicked base which was cut away to produce a shallow cone. The latter form is found solely on Spanish vessels and is particularly common on Valencian Lustreware of the late 14th to 16th centuries. .DECORATION. Applied decoration consists of strips, pellets, dots and more elaborate shapes used either singly or together to make a design. Given that clay is a plastic medium in which virtually any shape could be produced it is remarkable how little variety there is in the range of applied decoration during the medieval period.
It is necessary to distinguish several different modes of appli.cation on the basis of the consistency of the applied clay. These are slip-paint, plastic clay trailed slip and leather-hard clay.
Painted decoration is applied with a brush or the fingers whilst the clay is a liquid slip. In some cases 'smearing' might be a better term than 'painting' to describe the action since it appears that the slip was of a consistency similar to butter when applied. However, no record was made during this study of the incidence of these two variations in application. Two types of slip were used; a red-firing slip (coloured by haematite and often more iron rich that local red-firing clays) and a white-firing slip (coloured by kaolinite, and the absence of iron. These paints often contain fine to very fine quartz and white mica).
Red painted white wares are rare in the region. A notable excep.tion is Coarse Border Ware, where red painted lines, usually grouped together to form arrows, are found on the jugs and cisterns of late 14th and 15th century date. Another exception, on the northern fringes of the region, is Staffordshire sandy red-painted ware, probably also of late medieval date. Rhenish red-painted ware is not found in the region and only one vessel of Stamford red-painted ware has been found, at Hereford.
Both red and white painted slip are found on a few 14th century Malvern Chase jugs whilst white painted decoration is found on several late 13th to 14th century jugs in Hereford A7b and similar fabrics in S. E. Wales as well as on early to mid-13th century jugs in Newbury C fabric.
Strips, pellets and dots of plastic clay are the basis for much of the decoration on 12th to 14th century jugs.
On 12th century tripod pitchers two sorts of strip are used; broad, usually decorated along the top with thumbing, and narrow triangular-sectioned, usually plain. The differences between the two types appear to be due to methods of application. The broad strips would be rolled out as a sausage and placed in the required position on the pot. They would then be pressed into place with the thumb. Two types of thumbing occur, individual thumb impressions placed square to the strip and diagonal impressions made with the side of the thumb.
The narrow strips might also be coiled and placed in position but would then be squeezed between the thumb and forefinger. Where these narrow strips are decorated it takes the form of a pie-crust thumbing which it would be possible to make at the time of application.
The broad strips are found on Malvern Chase early tripod pitchers usually at the neck, around the spout, around the girth and then vertically joining the neck and girth strips. A similar pattern is found on a few Minety tripod pitchers but these, like Newbury C and Oxford Y vessels, more commonly use narrow triangular strips in conjunction with combing, usually to form slightly diagonal vertical lines.
Oval, triangular-sectioned pellets are found on Newbury C jugs whilst rounded blobs are found on Bristol Redcliffe jugs (as part of horse-shoe designs).
Slip applied as a thick liquid, probably using a horn or similar tool (cf. Brears, 1971, 119-120) is known as trailed slip. Apart from a few rare examples from the Deerfold Forest kilns, which might be as early as c.1600 (but are unstratified), the earliest use of trailed slip in the region is in the Newent Glasshouse potteries in the 1670's. The first use of Staffordshire redware plates decorated with trailed slip probably pre-dates this but they are usually found in association with clay pipes of the 1680 to 1700 period. The introduction of the familiar Staffordshire trailed slipware plates and hollow ware c.1680 involved the use of more than one colour of slip on the same vessel and often combined with an overall slip as a 'primer'.
Trailed slipware was produced in the Low Countries and the Rhineland at the end of the 16th century (Werra ware) and in the Harlow region of Essex by c.1630 (Metropolitan Slipware). The Severn Valley therefore seems to have resisted this particular trend for at least half a century.
There is evidence from Mill Green, Essex for the use of slip-trailing in the early 14th century but the technique was not used elsewhere (Pearce et al., forthcoming).
The attachment of thin moulded shapes to a pot by luting was known in the Staffordshire potteries as 'Sprigging'. These applique patterns are usually well-moulded and their application must have taken a good deal of skill. Their use is not surprisingly limited to 'fine wares', the earliest of which were probably Cologne Stoneware drinking jugs of the mid-16th century. late 16th to early 17th Century French barrel costrels (from the Saintonge and/or Northern France) also use this technique (Hurst, 1974, 247-250, Fig.10). The earliest use in this country seems to have been at Woolwich in the early 17th Century (Pryor & Blockley, 1978) and at Fulham in the last quarter of the 17th century, both in the experimental production of stoneware bottles. The technique became more common in the mid-18th century, still mainly with stoneware potters with the production of white salt-glazed stoneware teapots in the Staffordshire potteries and large stoneware mugs in the London potteries.
Grooved lines can be added to a pot in two ways; freehand or by using the wheel. Freehand grooving is normally found on handmade vessels. The grooves are usually less than 1mm deep and 2 to 3 mm wide. They were made with a blunt tool, the most common patterns being horizontal wavy and straight lines. Grooved line decoration is found on some cooking pots but is rare, although, it is more common on tripod pitchers. Shrewsbury-type pitchers, of early 13th century date often have cross-hatched decoration on the shoulder and girth. Ham Green jugs typically have closely spaced grooved lines spiralling around the vessel. These were most likely applied using a tournette or turntable and were added before the handles. Malvern Chase early tripod pitchers often have widely spaced horizontal grooved lines.
Wheelthrown grooving is normally added as the last stage of wheelthrowing, before removal from the wheel (and is distinguished here from 'turning', in which the vessel is replaced on the wheel after some drying has taken place). Wheelthrown grooves usually occur as a group or zone on the shoulder or just above the girth of a pot. A number of post- medieval wares have these grooves, amongst them Malvern Chase, the Herefordshire potteries and Ashton Keynes.
Comb impressions are found on many pot types from the 11th century onwards. The tools used are unremarkable, having between 3 and 6 evenly spaced teeth, the whole comb being between 5 and 10mm wide. No attempt has been made in the study region to identify individual combs and such an attempt would almost certainly fail in all but the rarest instance.
Combing is the most common method of decoration on tripod pitchers of Minety, Hereford A2 and Newbury C types. Only a small number of designs are known, but it would be difficult to identify more with the small number of complete or substantial parts of vessels known.
Ham Green jugs, especially those of type 'A', are often comb-decorated. The usual design consists of horizontal lines, often spiralling like the grooved lines on the same ware. Cross-hatched lines are also found.
Individual stamps are found on 11th to 12th century spouted pitchers, and rarely on later medieval jugs. These later stamps are usually impressed onto an applied pad whilst the earlier ones are impressed directly onto the body of the pot, usually around the shoulder and more rarely on the handle, spout or inside of the rim.
The stamps are usually round, although square examples are known. They usually consist of simple geometrical patterns, such as the 'wheel' pattern of radiating spokes or the 'grid' pattern of cross-hatched lines. Individual stamps have not been identified in this study but those used in Bath have been analysed by Cunliffe (1979, 145-8, Fig.68). The incidence of stamping varies through the region and is most common in Wiltshire and Avon but is virtually unknown in Shropshire and Hereford and Worcester. In Gloucestershire, as befits its intermediate position, only a small proportion of the spouted pitchers are stamped.
Roller-stamping, or 'rouletting', is found on many Late Saxon cooking pots, normally as a single horizontal line on the shoulder. The technique is then absent from the region until the 12th century, when several tripod pitcher types are decorated with it, but this time used in a more elaborate way. Early 13th century Worcester jugs are decorated with spiral or horizontal bands of roller-stamping, possibly applied on the wheel and this type is often found on late 13th to 14th century jugs in the Welsh Marches, from Gwent to Cheshire.
Only two roller-stamped pottery types are found in the region; Chester-type ware (possibly made at Stafford) and Stamford ware cooking pots. The other fabric in which wheelthrown cooking pots occur is Gloucester TF41a. Roller- stamping does not occur on these vessels, nor on any of the Late Saxon handmade wares in the region.
Only two patterns of roller-stamp are known from the Late Saxon pottery in the region; diamond lattice and, rarely, rectangular lattice. The rollers were mainly between 10 and 20mm wide and quite often only one side of the stamp impression is found, because of the curvature of the pot.
Roller-stamping is found on Malvern Chase, Newbury C, Hereford A2 and Hereford A3 tripod pitchers. The standard pattern in all cases except Malvern Chase is a single row of rectangles, 1-2mm wide.
Malvern Chase tripod pitchers have a number of roller- stamp patterns, the most common of which is the single row of chevrons. The roller-stamping occurs as horizontal, diagonal and vertical lines sometimes combined with applied strips.
Ham Green type 'A' jugs are decorated sparingly with diamond lattice roller-stamping. Decoration is added at the latest stage of manufacture and is often found on the handle, rim and base.
The roller-stamping on Worcester jugs is made with a wide variety of stamps (but only one stamp is used per pot). The most common pattern is the single row of rectangles but much more complicated patterns exist. The roller-stamping was always applied before the handle and spout and is often partially obscured by the thick glaze. The zone of decoration extends from the shoulder to a point c.50mm above the base.
Roller-stamping is used in the same way as Worcester on jugs from Shropshire and Cheshire, the main pattern used being the single row of rectangles, and on the 'Complex rouletted' jugs of the Gwent/S.W. Herefordshire area but the patterns used there are usually less geometrical and include running vines (Hurst, 1962-3).
Another type of roller-stamping occurs mainly on Oxford AM jugs. On these jugs the roller-stamping is impressed onto vertical light coloured and red-firing strips. The usual pattern of roller-stamping is multiple rows of square impressions. The same type of roller-stamping, also found on applied strips, occurs on early to mid-13th century London- type jugs.
Roller-stamping is rare on post-medieval vessels. The technique was only used on Raeren drinking jugs (diamond lattice pattern), Ashton Keynes flanged plates and rare, red earthenware bowls from Monmouth.