Crocks or Pots? Relating Redware Vessel Forms to Folk Terms in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

This paper presents a type series for lead-glazed coarse red earthenware (or redware), a common artifact recovered from nineteenth-century sites in southern Ontario. Indeed, domestic potters produced a myriad of vessel forms that met the needs of rural consumers, who used the inexpensive redwares in food preparation, food storage and dairying on a daily basis. It is recognized, therefore, that a standardized classificatory scheme based on functional form would help researchers relate the artifacts that they find to the uses to which they were put. It is hoped that the typology will promote future critical comparison of redware assemblages on both intersite and inter-regional levels.