The Wedgwood Society of New York
April 1997 Lecture Topic and Meeting Notice

Our second meeting of the Spring season will be held on Tuesday April 8, 1997 at 8:00 PM at the Lighthouse, 111 East 59th Street, between Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue, New York, NY at 8:00 PM.

Our distinguished speaker of the evening will be Mr. David Barker. This will be Mr. Barker's fourth lecture to our Society. In 1989, "To Put You in the Mind of a Red Teapot," 1990 "Fit For a Queen - The Beginning of Creamware," 1993 "The Art of the Slipware Potter," and on April 8, 1997 he will tell us about:

An Eighteenth-Century Staffordshire Potworks: Excavations at Shelton Farm

Archaeologists from Stoke-on-Trent's City Museum have uncovered the remains of a substantial pottery factory which was in business between ca. 1720 and the early nineteenth century. Amongst the factory's tenants was John Astbury, an early manufacturer of the refined red earthenwares, agate wares, and white salt-glazed stonewares with which the Staffordshire potteries came to dominate the world market. This presentation examines the evidence for the operation of an early pottery factory, its ovens, and its products. With a wealth of material remains for every aspect of pottery manufacture, Shelton Farm is the most important site in North Staffordshire to have been studied is recent years.

Mr. Barker is currently Keeper of Archaeology at the City Museum & Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent and has been with the museum since 1978. He is also the President of the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology, the Editor of Staffordshire Archaeological Studies and an Examiner for Museums Association Diplomas in Collection Management.

He also has done excavations in and around Stoke-on-Trent, mainly concerned with the post-medieval ceramics industry, including the Greatbatch Site, Fenton (eighteenth-century pottery waste dump); sites on the Hanley Eastern Bypass (eighteenth-century pottery waste dumps and factory features); and Shelton Farm (eighteenth-century pottery factory complex). He has special interests in post-medieval archaeology generally, but more specifically the archaeology of post-medieval ceramics (production, technology, distribution, and use), with particular emphasis upon the ceramics of North Staffordshire of ca. 1500-1900.

Mr. Barker has written the book William Greatbatch -- A Staffordshire Potter, published by Jonathan Horne in 1991 and mary other articles. He has also been a contributor to our magazine, Ars Ceramica.


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