Description

Fabric: creamy white or yellow paste with fine mineral tempering, consistent with the other Morisco wares. Picture.

Glaze: Thin light gray tin glaze, which is subject to wear, crazing, pinholing, and other irregularities (Deagan 1987:56). Vessels are decorated with cobalt blue decoration usually consisting of stylized foliate decoration painted in crude slashing brush strokes. The handles of pitchers are always painted with a series of dashes (Goggin 1968:132).

Form: The forms are distinguished by their large and crude shapes and consist primarily of rolled rim bowls ranging from 8 to 13" in diameter, cups, jars, and pitchers. Heavy throwing rings are visible on the body while the necks and bases are usually smoothed.

Santo Domingo Blue on White is a type of Morisco ware, simple coarse tin-glazed wares made by Christianized Moslems of Arabic-Berber descent living in Seville. It acquired its name from the area of Caribbean in which it was first systematically studied but Spanish researchers have proposed a Castillian descriptor, azul figurativa, which would reflect its association with Seville (Pleguezuelo and Laafuente). While no examples have been recognized in England (Hurst 1995:51), the ware is found throughout the Spanish Caribbean colonies c. 1550-1630 (Deagan: 61). The ware has been found on two Spanish shipwrecks: the San Antonio, wrecked near Bermuda in 1621 and the Atocha, a 1622 shipwreck off the coast of Florida.

Sources
Deagan, Kathleen (1987) Artifacts of the Spanish Colonies of Florida and the Caribbean, 1500-1800, Volume I. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Goggin, John M. (1968) Spanish Majolica in the New World: Types of the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries. Yale University Publications in Anthropology, Vol. 72.

Hurst, John (1995) "Post-Medieval Pottery from Seville Imported into North-West Europe," in Duncan R. Hook and David R.M. Gaimster (ed.s) Trade and Discovery: The Scientfic Study of Artefacts from Post-medieval Europe and Beyond. British Museum Occasional Paper 109.

Marken, Mitchell W. (1994) Pottery from Spanish Shipwrecks 1500-1800. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

Pleguezuerlo, Alfonso and M. Pilar LaFuente (1995) "Ceramicas de Andalucia occidental (1200-1600)", in Christopher M. Gerrard et al. (eds.) Spanish Medieval Ceramics in Spain and the British Isles. BAR International Series 610. Oxford, England, 217-244.

Sites
Jamestown, National Park Service Collections

Prepared by Bly Straube