People and their collections

Robert Plot 1640-96 - scientist & antiquary

In The Natural History of Stafford-shire (1686) Robert Plot uses terminology that may be unfamiliar to the modern reader. These terms, and others used in discussion here, are explained below:

• flat ware - plate or dish
  
  
• hollow ware - cup, mug, posset pot, jug
  
  
• marl - coarse local clay with large natural inclusions (small stones)
  
  
• saggar/shrager - special container made to hold and protect hollow wares during firing
  
  
• sherd/shard - broken fragment of pottery
  
  
• slip - finely prepared clay thinned with water to liquid consistency
  
  
• wasters - heat-distorted or cracked pottery discarded at or near the kiln site. Some distorted pottery was traded if the vessels were still functional, so one or two 'wasters' at a domestic site does not necessarily mean that there was a kiln nearby.

The pottery kiln and firing time

Plot and Pottery

Themes in learned society