Ceramics
imported into Charleston were heavily influenced by the fluctuations in other
imported and exported goods. While
earthenwares and porcelains might have captured a handsome price on the retail
market, they were not necessarily a primary import to Charleston in the 18th
century. The weight of ceramics was high
when compared to the risk and cost of shipping, considering the level of
breakage which might occur on any given voyage.
In addition to the loss of income from spoiled cargoes, owners had to
pay high rates of insurance, raising the cost further. In 1764, merchant Henry Laurens lost 10 casks
of earthenware and another ten casks of "Yellow ware" due to breakage
during shipping;[1]
these were then sold for £4 to £5 - far below market value for the wares.
Shipments
of ceramics were infrequently listed in ship’s manifests or customs records,
and even then the details were minimal.
One cargo might include “18 crates of earthenware,” or “21 baskets of
earthenware.” In a sampling taken from
January 1763 to December 1764, only 8 of the 120 entries contained any
reference to ceramics and of these, only two revealed any significant detail,
those being 8 dozen milk pans from the Fair Lady[2]
and 6 chamber pots shipped on the Betsey.[3] Yet, despite this lack of evidence for
ceramics in import records, information about the ceramics market can be
gleaned from the records, and data might be inferred from the details of trade
for other commodities traveling between Charleston, Europe, and the West
Indies.
Shipping
lists for major imports and exports (potentially those items for which duties
would be collected) exist for the port of Charleston for much of the eighteenth
century. Details of weight, unit and
price can be found in naval lists and customs records. In a landmark study of Charleston port
statistics completed in 1984, Converse Clowse analyzed 50 years of these import
and export records to the southern port, attempting to synthesize them into a
comprehensible and useful set of data .[4]
Viewed as a whole, the numbers may seem
inconclusive; but when broken down by commodity, we see a market driven by the
tension between the need to sell exported goods and the desire to maintain a
steady supply of British good to the colonies.
This supply and demand tug-of-war influenced Charleston style by
affecting the choice of ports, the choice of ships and the rhythm of shipping between the colonies, England, and
the West Indies.
England’s
Commercial Core
Britain’s
capitol city of London captured a large part of the Charleston export trade in
the 1760s, accepting an average of
20-30% of British rice shipments.[5] This was due in part to the increasing
commercial and banking network developing in London during the latter half of
the eighteenth century. As a political
center of the American colonies before the Revolution, London attracted those
interested in maintaining close ties to the English economy, including
merchants, law makers, and scholars, all of whom stood to benefit from London’s
growth. Charleston’s links with London
were even more direct, as hundreds of Charleston sons and daughters were sent
across the Atlantic to obtain their education.
The letters of Eliza Lucas Pinckney and Henry Laurens describe effect
that this had on the family relationships and often on the social financial
status of the family. The children kept
their families and friends up to date with news and market information, and
when they returned to Charleston, they brought the news of the au courant
back to the Low Country, making Charleston more "British" than many
of her northern neighbors.
This
economic development did not escape the scrutiny of England’s potters, who
began to move their trade from Bristol to London after 1770. Fashionable showrooms provided meeting places
for the city’s upper class, and ensured a steady market for the enterprising
potter/merchant. A new system of canals
and roads, encouraged by Wedgwood and other potters in Staffordshire, brought
English ceramics to the doorsteps of England’s elite, while simultaneously
improving the transportation of goods to the West Indies and American colonies.
London's
status as a commercial center was challenged by the western trade center of
Bristol. Identified by Sellars as one of
the primary centers of trade with South Carolina before the Revolution, fully
one third of Bristol’s ships sailing before 1765 came to Charleston either
directly, or through southern Spanish ports of Teneriffe or Cadiz, West African
trade centers, or fishing ports of the northeast colonies.[6] In addition to the finished goods being
shipped from England, ships from Bristol brought..... Bristol was also strategically located to
capture a majority of the pottery exports prior to 1770.[7] Bristol merchants furnished ceramics to a
large market; Wedgwood felt it was lucrative enough to strike up a business
relationship with merchant Thomas Bentley of Bristol in 1764, and Henry Laurens
kept his hand in the Bristol market well into the 1770s.
Despite
the economic positioning between London and Bristol, ships from Charleston
found their way to other British and Continental ports as well. The small town of Cowes, located on the Isle
of Wight near Portsmouth, was the relay point for the market in northern
Europe.[8] “To Cowes and a Market” was a familiar phrase
as nearly 60,000 barrels of rice and more than 5000 pounds of indigo were
funneled through the English port from Charleston between 1760 and 1767.[9]
The western port
town of Liverpool brought a unique market to Charleston during this
period. From 1762 to 1763, Liverpool was
home port to more than 60% of the ships transporting slaves to Charleston,
compared to only 37% in 1758 to 1760 and 0% in 1766. Logically, they also conducted a small
portion of the trade in rum and sugar to Charleston, and were responsible for a
token shipment of bread and flour in the late 1750s. China wares from “Liverpule” were listed in
shipments and inventories throughout the 1760s, indicating that ships were also
arriving from Liverpool with ceramics aboard.
Dramatic
fluctuations in commodities were the result of shift in trade policy as Britain
and the colonies began to vie for greater control of the export market. The volatility of the political and economic
relations between England and her colonies provided the impetus for colonial
merchants to find alternatives for their good, both imports and exports. Whereas Charleston merchants were generally content to receive goods from
England, there was a gradual increase in intra-colonial trade throughout the
mid eighteenth century, particularly with respect to grain products.[10] Bread, flour, corn, rum, molasses, etc. were
shipped from Boston, Philadelphia and New York in great quantities. With the increase in imports from the north,
locally made ceramic wares (primarily coarse earthenwares) began to infiltrate
the ceramics market in Charleston during the latter half of the 1700s. Archaeological samplings from the Judicial
Center site reveal black-glazed earthenwares which may have originated from the
Boston (Charlestown) area in the 1760s.
Charleston
and the West Indies
While
the relations between Charleston and England accounted for the majority of the
export trade from Charleston, the islands of the West Indies also enjoyed a
favorable trade with the southern port.
Cast from a West Indian mold in the seventeenth century, Charleston
never forgot her social and economic roots, and maintained strong ties with her
island neighbors to the southeast.
The ties between
the West Indies and Charleston formed the warp of an intricate system of trade,
commerce, and familial relations which dictated the very essence of Charleston
style and culture throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From its early settlement, Charleston was
tied inextricably with the West Indies, having been born of the plantation
culture on islands like Barbados, Antigua, or Jamaica. These relationships were formed during the
1600s, when experienced planters from the Indies were recruited to establish
Low Country plantations. These relations
were continued in the early part of the eighteenth century, when island
plantation families sent sons and daughters to the Low Country to establish
themselves as planters and merchants in the growing Carolina market. Names like Middleton, Whaley, Perry and Lucas
were found in both Charleston and the West Indies,[11]
emphasizing the strength of the economic and social ties between the two
colonial centers. The new Carolinians
are said to have exhibited cultural patterns more like the Caribbean colonies
than northern counterparts.[12] British traders also settled in Charleston,
lending ties to the families of Nathaniel Russell, Benjamin Smith, and the
Savages.
These familial
relations translated into business for the colonies, as goods were shipped
between Charleston and the West Indies, and business partners established while
in the Caribbean were extended to the new Carolina trade. An excellent example can be seen in the
relationship established by Charleston ship owners and merchants Thomas and
William Savage, who co-owned the brigantine “Savage” with William Dickenson and
John Young from Bermuda.[13] Their 1764 cargo included earthenware, shoes,
mirrors, haberdashery - finished goods from Britain being imported to
Charleston via Bermuda. In addition to
the British trade through the Indies, the rising sugar trade, including the
shipment of slaves, was an integral part of the Charleston-Indies connection as
countless men, women, and children were transported to the plantations in the
Low Country and the islands of the Caribbean, and sugar was exported to sites
in Europe and the northern colonies.
Charleston’s
Main Crops
When
early settlers to the Low Country were experimenting with crops for export,
they realized that they would have to select those staples which could not be
grown in England to avoid competing with their benefactors.[14] Crops like grapes, olives, indigo and oranges
were tried, but only a few withstood the sub-tropical growing season of the
South.[15]
Of the items
attempted in Charleston, rice became the money crop for many South Carolina
planters after 1705. The Low Country was
an excellent environment for rice production, equipped as it was with seemingly
unlimited supplies of water, excellent transportation, and an easily obtainable
source of manpower. It was a staple crop
which could be shipped with few problems, and it did not compete with the
British export trade.[16] By the second half of the 18th century rice
commanded the greatest share of the market, delivering over 35,000 barrels a
year to Great Britain and the West Indies.[17] It is worth noting, however, that not all
barrels of Carolina rice went to the commercial center of London (Table
1). While London and Bristol were the
largest importers of rice until 1760, other British towns pulled their share of
Charleston exports as well. Smaller
ports which drew their share of the exports included Gosport, Portsmouth and Poole in southern England,
Glasgow to the north, and Liverpool to the west. In 1763 it was the southern port of Cowes
which dominated the market with almost 28,000 barrels of rice.
In
the previous year, the market leader was not in Britain, but the West
Indies. Between 1760 and 1762, West
Indian rice imports went from 9500 barrels to 23000 barrels. As a comparison, corn exports to the Indies
increased from 9000 in 1761 to 41500 in 1762.
It is possible that with the dramatic increase in the Liverpool slave
trade, island populations grew, requiring larger quantities of staple crops
were needed to support them. Carolina
rice was supplied to plantations in the West Indies, along with other items
such as staves, tar, and pitch. Items
such as salt, corn, bread, etc. were imported to Charleston from other ports,
and were reshipped to the islands. This
increased traffic to the Indies continued throughout the 1760s.
The
second largest export from Charleston during pre-Revolutionary Charleston was
indigo. This dye plant, which was grown
on Low Country plantations, produced a blue dye which could be extracted then
shipped to ports throughout Europe for use in manufacturing cloth and other
goods. Nearly 1700 pounds of indigo
were shipped in the 1760s.
The production
of indigo was labor intensive, with [several hundred] pounds of indigo
producing only ounces of dye. The indigo
season could be dovetailed with other crops, so it was possible for plantations
to grow two different crops.
Unfortunately, like many other crops, indigo extracted nutrients from
the soil, leaving it unfit for replanting after a few seasons. Planters had to shift fields repeatedly,
leaving the fallow field to nature.
The
exportation of indigo was not always dependable because of competition with
other European and Asian crops. In the
Caribbean, Montserrat was one of the top exporters, along with ........ As production of cloth increased, the market
for dyes, especially indigo, grew. The
trade finally dropped off by the 1790s, and was no longer viable after the mid
1800s.
Charleston's
other exports included deerskins, tar and pitch, and naval stores, some of
which were shipped in from Georgia and North Carolina. Before indigo, deerskins ranked 2nd
in exports. This trade in skins was
much dependent upon relations with the Native American residents, which
fluctuated during the 1760s as inter-tribal alliances threatened trade
relations.
The Impact of Trade on the Ceramics
Market
While
documentary evidence divulges little evidence of a direct link between Atlantic
trade and the styles of imported wares, it is clear that certain relationships
exist between the pattern of trade and the ceramics market in 1760s
Charleston. The most obvious influence
is the effect of trade on the available trade credit or cash available for the
purchase of the finer imported wares.
Charleston’s economic system produced a class of consumer who could well
afford the imported Chinese porcelain, creamware, or salt-glazed stoneware
which found its way into Charleston’s harbors.
This disposable income created a market which might not have existed in
areas of more repressed economies.
The dependence
of Charleston upon the English market required that the importation of ceramic
wares would be limited to those which were accessible to the English
consumer. While the best ceramics may
not have been shipped to the colonies first, they did eventually arrive, and
were eagerly purchased by the colonial consumers. When trade patterns shifted from London to
Bristol to Liverpool, the ceramics market flexed as well, as evidenced by
probate listings of Liverpool china and the archaeological remains of Bristol
delftwares.
Relations
with the West Indies may also have influenced the types of ceramics found in
Charleston. Letters from Wedgwood
indicate that certain types of wares, the green and gold glazed earthenwares,
were shipped to the Indies when their popularity had waned in England and on
the Continent. These wares are found in
Charleston probate inventories and archaeological excavations, while they are
not as prevalent in northeastern colonies.[18]
[1]George
C. Rogers, Papers of Henry Laurens.
Columbia : University of South
Carolina
[2]January 28, 1763. Fair Lady Schooner. Shipping Lists p. 122 British Public Records Office
[3]Shipping Lists p. 124
[4]Converse Clowse, Measuring Charleston America
[5]Clowse 59, 70.
[6] Walter Minchinton, “Richard Champion,
Nicholas Pocock and the Carolina Trade,” South Carolina
[7] Sellars 1934
[8]Laurens, Papers.
[9]Clowse, 59, 70.
[10]
Clowse, 44-45.
[11] Sellars 4-5.
[12] Jack P. Green, Colonial Carolina
and the Caribbean Connection, South
Carolina
[13]
Ship manifests
[14] Edgar, Sellers
[15] Edgar p. 132-133
[16] Leila Sellars, Charleston
[17]Sellers
[18]
Personal communication, Martha Pinello, archaeologist, Strawbery Banke
Museum
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