Tikchik village: a nineteenth century riverine community in ... - Cluster

290 FIELDIANA: ANTHROPOLOGY, VOLUME 56ments tend to be from deep vessels with smooth rims. Generallyspeaking, all the wares, with the possible exception of a few transferprintedsaucer fragments, give the impression of being heavy, crudelydecorated, and highly utilitarian.Unfortunately, the non-Eskimo pottery from Tikchik, like thatfrom other historic sites in Alaska, is not useful for dating within narrowlimits. Ironstone ware is still being made and design elements,both in the United States and England, were so widely borrowed thatthey appear to have no chronological significance. Specimens oftransfer-printed ware and hand-painted ware in the Tikchik collectionclosely resemble examples from the Taral site on the CopperRiver (VanStone, 1955) and the Crow Village site (Oswalt and Van-Stone, 1967). At these latter sites the wares exhibited definite latenineteenth or early twentieth century characteristics such as shadeof color, sharply-cut design, rounded saucer foot rims, extreme hardwhiteness, crude application of color and design, etc. The Tikchiktransfer-printed and hand-painted wares thus can date no earlierthan the latter part of the nineteenth century.A single bottom sherd of hand-painted ware and a plain white mugfragment have clearly visible potter's marks. The former mark consistsof a lion and unicorn coat of arms with the words "Royal IronstoneChina" above and "Johnson Bros., England" below (PI. 8,4).This is one of the marks of Johnson Brothers (Hanley) Ltd., an oldEnglish firm dating back to 1758 which, in 1883, was acquired by theJohnson brothers and began to produce white ware for the Americanmarket (Rhead, 1910, pp. 152-153; Thorn, 1947, p. 80; Godden,1964, p. 355) The second mark also had the words "Royal Ironstone.China," this time located above and below a crown design. Belowthis are the words "Maddock & Co.," "Burslem, England," "trademark." The firm of John Maddock and Sons, Ltd. in Burslem wasfounded in 1830 and specialized in the manufacture of "useful merchantilewares," chiefly for export to the American market. Thecompany is still in existence but this particular mark began to beused around the turn of the century (Rhead, 1910, p. 171 ; Godden,1964, p. 406).On the basis of these two marks it would seem that at least partof the ironstone ware from the Tikchik site is of British manufacture.However, it is also possible that some of the ware is American. In1891 the United States began to require that all imports, includingpottery, be labeled with the name of the country of origin. Therefore,after 1891 all English pottery exported to the United States was