Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology		The Collections:
	PotWeb:	Ceramics online @ the Ashmolean Museum	•	Early Europe & Near East
			•	Classical to Medieval
			•	Europe from 1500
			•	Oriental & Islamic

Fingerprints of the maker

Smart potters succeed
The repertoire of vessels and their distribution patterns reflect the economic drive of a production centre. Rising incomes in the thirteenth century encouraged the demand for `packaged' foods, such as butter in pots. By anticipating consumer demand with innovation and marketing, certain pottery workshops succeeded. Such an example is the production centre at Brill/Boarstall, which dominated the local ceramic market for some 500 years.	Novelties captured the townsmen's imagination
The social status of the potters and their families can be explored through interpreting the processes of imitation, innovation and `style drift'. This helped to spread new designs and new products. Conclusions from such studies can be substantiated by the techniques of ethnoarchaeology in modern craft-based communities. Our understanding of the production techniques can be explored by means of field experiments and reconstruction.

How were pots fired?

Fingerprints ...

Bibliography

© Copyright University of Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 2000 The Ashmolean Museum retains the copyright of all materials used here and in its Museum Web pages. last updated: jcm/27-jun-2000