[Sca-cooks] A Comment & A Question was ( Jonathan Swift was an Optimist)

[Elizabeth A Heckert]

On Fri, 3 Aug 2001 15:53:29 -0500 "Decker, Terry D."
<TerryD at Health.State.OK.US> writes:
>I am seeking references to trenchers in both primary and secondary
>sources for a paper I am preparing.  Does anyone have any references
handy?
>
>Bear
>
  I have a book on inter-library loan right now, called "Medieval Pottery
in Britain AD 900-1600" by Michael R. McCarth and Catherine M. Brooks (
Leicester University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-7185-1254-5; ISBN 0-7185-1271-5
pbk.)
Chapter 2,  'Production and Distribution' says:

  "The later Middle Ages was thus a period of change. [...] Potters made
inroads into the wood turner's domain with the manufacture of ceramic
drinking vessels and in the seventeenth century, pottery plates,
imitating pewter forms, began to edge out wooden boards and trenchers."
(pg.90)

   Chapter 3 is a lovely chapter called 'Pottery and Society'.  It
compares ceramic and non-ceramic vessels.  It says about trenchers:

  "Wooden (or 'treen') trenchers and platters were widespread in the
later medieval and early post-medieval periods, replacing the bread
trenchers of earlier times."  (pg. 99)  This page also has a picture of a
wooden trencher in the Oxfordshire County Museum, Woodstock.

   The rest of the citations which are listed as 'plates/platters' in the
index are records of items recovered at digs, and are mostly about
platters.  I found a website talking about pit-fired pottery, which is a
less sophisticated means of firing, than was in main use at the end of
our 'period', and that gentleman said that he found plates to be the
hardest to fire.
<http://www.physics.mq.edu.au/~gnott/Miklagard/Articles/#Fig.1> is the
site.

   Sorry this is so long!  It's basically anti-evidence I suppose, but it
might give you some background; that is if you want to be that in-depth
with the article.  I also didn't want you to go to the trouble of geting
the pottery book and then find out it's useless to your research!

    Elizabeth

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