Ale Bottle
Ale Bottle
Attributed to the Sanders Pottery
Mortlake, England
1755
Stoneware
HOA: 8 5/8
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, gift in memory of Joseph Porter Moore by his wife, Adelia Peebles Moore
Photograph by Craig McDougal
In the early 1970s, Ivor Nöel Hume excavated the kitchen yard at Carter’s Grove Plantation in James City County, Virginia, and found two ale bottle fragments with the applied names “G: Burwell” and “Edwd: Atthaws” along with the date “1755.” An intact example was discovered during the MESDA Field Research program. Edward Athawes was Carter Burwell’s London agent. It seems likely that Athawes ordered a supply of ale bottles from a London-area potter on Burwell’s behalf to celebrate the completion of his new house, Carters Grove, in 1755. Found archeologically in the kitchen yard, in a 1770s context, the bottles were probably refilled with domestic brews and reused until they broke.
Read the original article about the discovery of this bottle in The Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts (November 1975)
