 I'm sort of taking us into the 17th century. I hope that's okay. I realize we've been definitely kind of slowly drawing our way here eventually throughout the day. And I probably should say just to begin that this is very much a work in progress project. It's part of a larger postdoctoral project on political pots and thinking about ceramics and reading them as historical texts, working from 1600 to about 1850 or so. I'm really delighted to be in such a knowledgeable audience and looking forward to your feedback. Undoubtedly, the 17th century in England bore witness to a changing world with a rise in print culture, increasing literacy rates. And as people like Joan first and Sarah panel and others have discussed, a growing domestic consumer market amongst the middling classes and people of the lower gentry. This is all of course set very much against a changing political landscape the violent upheaval caused by the civil wars to the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the subsequent restoration of the monarchy in 1660. And of course, unnaturally, such events had a significant impact on material and visual culture and especially on the novel new industry of Delftware ceramics production in London. And that's really the subject of my discussion today. From pro-monarchists and treasonous dishes showing Charles first in his meal airs, men in Southwark in the early 1650s to demonstrate the longevity of domestic power to cups mass produced and consumed following the restoration of Charles II declaring political allegiance and loyalty. Kind of ceramics play this very key role in this wider dissemination of monarchial power structures at this time. Often based on print culture, these objects raised questions regarding the intermedial nature of ceramics production, representations of history and the performative nature of the political experience during this time. And such interchange between media as someone like Mark Hallett has rightly stated might be said to be one of the most defining characteristics of the 17th century across British art, architecture and design but ceramics have really been marginalized within this conversation up until this point. So this is sort of bringing them to the forefront of the historical conversation the historical landscape. So instead this paper is very much arguing that ceramics embody a particular currency as historical agents producing meaning and constructing narratives of monarchial political rhetoric. Imbued with agency, it asks what type of role these ceramics played within the visual material and haptic quotidian political experience. And quite often these objects were displayed proudly or perhaps we'll see covertly in interiors yet as objects of use and haptic engagement they also played crucial roles in the performative nature of loyalist toasts and households and taverns perhaps amongst friends or amongst larger gatherings. So this paper really unpacks high potters and consumer markets responded to unpredictable moments of sociopolitical change through such material culture. It argues for ceramics to be understood as historical agents shaping sociopolitical conversation burgeoning constructions of history and loyalist ideologies leaving a lasting historical and material legacy in the political consciousness of mid 17th century England. And I just couldn't resist putting up this particular image as one of our displays at the V&A in the British galleries and obviously the mug in the center of Charles and Diana was not created in the mid 17th century as sort of a curatorial play for the visitor the eager eyed visitor I suppose. But I think it does say something about this tradition of commemorative objects still happening today kind of becoming very ubiquitous and something we assume but actually really trying to interrogate how did the start and why and what did it actually mean at that point as well. So this kind of commemoration on pots very much survives. Most of the wares that I'm going to be showing are earthen wares so the type known as delft ware which is essentially decoration painted onto a white tin glaze and delft ware was really the first ceramic material I would argue that was used for propaganda purposes as well as commemorative purposes documenting both public opinions and private loyalties. And the majority of the ones I'm looking at today were most likely produced in London a couple produced in Bristol but London is really the main production for these objects at this point. And in London local clay was mixed with a clay which had a higher calcium carbonate content and that was coming and being brought into the angular and also from Carrick Fergus and the clay was essentially dissolved into sort of water filled tanks and you can see these here on the screen and it became this kind of soupy mixture not very appealing for Saturday afternoon but then it was essentially strained into a shallow drying tank so that would actually make the water evaporate. The clay was then trodden on and that would completely remove air bubbles and then it would have been thrown onto a wheel although sometimes molds were used and essentially we have a kind of unglazed biscuit vessel that was ready for decoration it was first dipped into a tin white glaze which was a sort of a mixture of tin oxide and lead oxide and it was decorated and after this it was then fired. The London Delftware industry then was really still very much in its infancy in the 1640s when war broke out between King and Parliament and of course as we know 1649 Charles I was executed and ruled without King is established in England. As a sort of shift with this royalist supporters were obliged very much to surrender their silver tablewares under threat of penalties and inspections that were being carried out and quite a lot of key players at this point and especially city livery companies were forced to dispose of their treasures and quite a lot of these were then replaced with wood but mostly with Delftware. So it's probable that something like this which is very, very early Delftware candlestick based directly on a silver example made in 1648 which was owned by the Fishmongers Company would have suffered the similar kind of fate of having been sold. They'd had silver so they're buying something else and adding their own arms to it at this point. So the success of the Delftware industry at this point really coincides with an overall growth and pottery use for various reasons and that sort of shifts towards these commemorative wares that we begin to see. As Delftware could be produced on a fairly large scale it was also easily painted and frequently painted kind of the painting that goes through it is likened to watercolor because you had to do it so, so quickly before it dried though quite a kind of ordered labor process going on. So it was really the perfect material for showcasing private and public loyalties. This charger which is dated 1653 is a really fascinating example of this kind of early commemorative wear and it shows a full length striking I think full length portrait of Charles I and his three male heirs. So Prince Charles, Prince James and Henry Duke of Gloucester and for supporters of the British monarchy the preservation and longevity of the dynasty was incredibly important. So this is met four years after his execution and of course the very year that the Commonwealth was met Lord Protector. So it very much as a piece demonstrates continuing sympathies during the Commonwealth period for the monarchy. And if you can just eager eyes of you spot the initials at the very top which has the date 1653 and then above it I had an A, T, E and those initials were probably of a newly married couple with royalist sympathies who are actually commissioning this piece to be met to kind of mark their coming together. And I think it's difficult in many ways not to think that owning such a dish in London in 1653 would not have been seen or potentially seen as a treasonous act possibly punishable with severe penalties. And I think that really confirms the loyalty of whoever is commissioning these pieces but it also brings up very interesting questions about the methods of production of design or how specific pieces like this were actually commissioned and then secretly produced and kind of how that was the kind of a process of having between Delftware maker to buyer essentially. And of course, one of the key events in the history of English Civil War was the story of Charles II as a prince in 1651 hiding in the Oak Tree. And in the British galleries of the V&A there exists this remarkable tingly of birth and where plaque dating from 1660 are there but depicting Charles II surrounded by the crowns of England, Scotland and Ireland in the very branches of the gospel Oak Tree. Probably again, this is made in London and it's very much based on an engraving by Peter Stent and it's commemorating Charles and kind of one of the most key historical and political moments of the 17th century. And as we all know, Charles' escape from the parliamentary troops following the Battle of Worcester in 1651 was a story that he liked very much frequently to recount over the years from the writings of Samuel Pease to paintings and prints of the day reinforcing a political, textual and visual agenda whereby Charles II could become the people's king. At three o'clock in the morning of 4th September 1651 of course, a party of 60 royalist soldiers rode quietly up the gates of an old converted fiery the white ladies right on the border of Shopshire an area run by a farming family called the Pendrels of the Stark. We know that they kind of passed and noticed through miles and miles of countryside and among them of course was I think 2021 at this point, Charles I and at the white ladies, his coat and his britches apparently were removed. He was dressed in country clothes and kind of an old hat and kind of apparently had his long royal locks cut short and the king's account depicted sort of 30 years later to Samuel Pease records the decision and he says, Pease writes he told me that it would be very dangerous either to stay in the house or go into the wood there being a great wood hard by Bosqueville and he knew but one way hard to pass all the next day and that was to get up into a great oak in a pretty plain place where we could see round about us so they would certainly search all the wood for people that had made their escape. We got up into the great oak that had been locked some three or four years before and so it was grown out very bushy and thick not to be seen through and there we sat all the day and the next day the Pendrell brothers escort the king secretly away and we know of course that Charles II loved to tell this story and he commissioned a set of paintings to show the key moments of this adventure when he returns. I'm showing you one of these here in the 1660s and interestingly enough with all of these paintings Charles is not shown at the age in which he would have been when the events are taken place but he's shown at the age he is when he commissions them was quite an interesting visual trope happening here. So this is the third of the set of five scenes that he has created for this kind of traumatic escape following his defeat. As Scottish artist Roy and Katrina Murray has noted the stewards persistently promote a dynastic and domestic images to reinforce royal authority and I think something that's quite interesting I'm very interested in is with the materiality of ceramics is that a particular means through which to disseminate the this and this kind of particular form of image making to the public on a much larger scale? So what can we actually see in the tingly as earth and where a plaque? Well, we've got the head of Charles II surrounded by these primes and we've sort of flanked by two smaller trees and bearing the scroll with the words of the royal oak and painted in different colors of manganese and purple yellow and green and this sort of running scroll around the border and I guess adding another literal and figurative layer to the ceramic object is the fact that it's set into a wooden frame supposedly made from the at the bark of an oak tree which legend has it came directly from the royal oak tree itself. As someone like Susan Stewart would see it such materiality produces its meaning as a souvenir yet I would suggest that we can also read these types of objects as democratizing perhaps this experience and our interaction with political culture and historical records with such an object. The act of inserting this plaque into the bark suggests that it was worth preserving and we know that there was quite a well counted for tradition of taking wood from the tree as a souvenir a sort of tourist carving out pieces an act of claiming their stick in this metaphorical symbol of world British history and the cultural significance of such a piece demands further scrutiny and actually what's been quite interesting in researching for this talk I've just discovered another one of these in a private collection but it's been recorded I wasn't able to show you an image that's very, very excited by that. And I should say with this particular example because of the provenance of the piece a game which I sadly can't disclose it does there are, you know, there are shifts coming that it was inserted into the plaque in the 1660s whether it was that exact bark will we ever know it was a bark from a tree nearby on the land which do both graphically from where this piece comes from would suggest that it might be so it's quite, yeah, sort of watch the space like those. So to what extent does such a commemorative piece reinforce royal power and authority? Well, I think in many ways it certainly helped make someone like Charles the second people's king and it certainly helped record one of the best known stories of history from this period. And again, this idea of setting the plaque into the original tree of where this event supposedly take place is this kind of showing this object as a literal tangible example of history and I find that quite interesting. And once again, just like in the portraits and in the paintings, Charles is depicted in the ceramic as a sort of much older man again, quite interesting here. Of course, 1660 saw the restoration of Charles the second. Cromwell had died a couple of years before that and there was this desire to bring back or presumably a desire to, we think to decide to bring back more stability and order but not always necessarily the case with this decision but it very much is restoration was seen as a momentous occasion. Lots of ballads, popular royalist songs which sort of greeted and commemorated this event. Notably, Thomas Blout wrote and published several key histories from the Civil War including Boscobal, the history of his sacred majesties which was published in 1660. And we know that Edward Hyde, the first royal of Plarendon wrote the history of the rebellion which was written in the 1640s but actually wasn't published until much later. But despite this, of course, it's important to remember that according to people and David Cressy who's done a lot of work on this that in the 17th century, only about 30% of men and probably about 10% of women were literate. So still quite, you know, really relatively low numbers. The visual culture, material culture and oral news and things like ballads were incredibly important in terms of disseminating information to the masses. The increase in visual and material culture which commemorated Charles's restoration then was incredibly important too as it suggested an increasing demand for objects that could show political allegiance for the king. And it was really the Delftware factories that came to the front and sort of supply this rising consumer market. But of course we have to remember that these were highly decorative, brightly colored goods that could have been hung on the wall to decorate your home or put onto cabinets. But quite a few of them are colorful little mugs like this one painted with rather schematic portraits of Charles II. And I think these are really among the earliest commemorative British wares and they were really meant as much for display I think as for use. So here we see a bust of, here we see a bust portrait of Charles II under a sort of triumphal arch and sort of dull, you know, blues or gray yellow. I inscribed CRX with a sort of white interior in the background. And vessels like this are normally called coddle cups which refers to a medicinal drink known from medieval times onwards. And undoubtedly ceramics cups like these become very popular mediums for royal portraits. So we have cups and bottles and they were used widely not only in the domestic home, but also in taverns. And as such, their visual decoration really has the potential to reinforce the position of the crown by declaring the user's loyalty. And I think the key thing with something like this is that they would have been used. A person's haptic engagement with the object as they held it in their hands or poured from it or drank with it or perhaps even toasted with it meant that these objects took part in a sort of form of social performance. Users or owners had the opportunity to hold a piece of history in their hands and perhaps such images even started conversations or rather debates or arguments amongst friends. And it's likely that such objects played a key roles in establishing networks of gift exchange as well through material culture. So what was the level of production of these types of words? Like, well, such mugs we know normally were never included in inventories of Delft factories or London pottery. So there's a slight kind of issue in terms of getting theater of how many were created and produced but they must have formed a minute proportion of their significant proportion of their outputs. They would have been cheap to buy yet their decoration would have been sure that they were probably seldom used. So a huge number have really survived intact in greater numbers than we would expect. And I think that in further material and survival says a lot. It's also important to note with this one and one like this that such images were very fast shelf very quickly and it would have been quite a formulaic process of production as these images were repeated and repeated and repeated often with kind of varying detail as you might see. Of course, here we have a composition very similar to the dish I showed earlier but this time in the same sort of architectural space but this time we've got Charles II on this one here holding his scepter and globe standing between columns under an arch on a tachythor and they've got these lovely kind of tops with the canvas leaves. And that happens quite a lot. You get these delftware portraits of Charles II often in ceremonial robes probably derived from published images like this one I'm showing you and this is a particular line engraving by William Fairthorne from the early 1660s and it's not the National Portrait Gallery and it shares several similarities especially in terms of the design of the crown but the shape of the scepter and as well as the gold medallion around the neck as well. But what we have I think with the delft paste course seems obvious to say but it's worth saying is the introduction of color and I think that does really transform the design it brings kind of vibrancy to the story into the kind of historical moment as well. And similarly iconography from this printed etching which is now at the British Museum was kind of translated into a lot of delftware pieces. We've got an image of Charles this kind of being led to parliament wearing his crown and holding his orb and scepter and riding through a procession in London and if you just look closely enough you can see the sort of sign of the royal oak or the kind of tavern that he's passing by. I would always love that detail. And several prints exist of course which record Charles's coronation when he's possessing through the city of London but it's more likely this one is actually him riding to kind of a state opening of parliament he's already been crowned at this point. He's already wearing everything but several of these sort of key motifs and prints like this end up on existing ceramic pieces during the time. So I'm just going to show you very lastly the last couple of minutes just a couple of these. So we've got some jugs would have predominantly been used for gale but also perhaps for water. And so we've got the back of the jugs are two sort of panels enclosing in a ship with trees on one side and a sort of twisted rope. And on the other we've got a sort of central reserve of a sort of bull torso portrait of Charles II holding an aseptor in his right hand and orb in his left and just kind of blow up close so you can see that a bit closer. And of course the regalia, regalia med for Charles II coronation in 1661 forms the central part of the crown jewels today but they had been completely destroyed during the Commonwealth and so the king actually had to commission new pieces to be made when he returns and done by the royal goldsmith Robert Feiner. So you can see the sector which he's holding in this on the image of this jug representing of course the sovereign's kind of spiritual rule and you also have the sovereign's orb as a symbol of godly power on earth with cross above it. So once again it becomes clear that the desire to mark and celebrate a historic moment of the restoration of the monarch infiltrated into the market, Delftwares and encourage a large market of commemorative pieces. But here with this royal kind of all of his royal pieces together the image very much confirms Charles's right to rule his right to the throne, but we also have and hopefully you can see just the right hand side again some initials for SB which is most likely referencing again whoever commissioned this particular piece of the original owner of this piece determined to show their loyalty to the king and through such objects furthermore we're kind of emphasizing the monarchial image making of this time through the ceramic material medium. So in conclusion, during this period as we have seen there was a proliferation of decorative and useful ceramic wares that were made by several factories and most of which were in London producing gild dine images based on well-publicized historical moments produced very much quickly in years following the key historical events which they depicted they were also seeking to commemorate key moments in British history whilst also allowing the user to demonstrate their political and often monarchial allegiance. Often these ceramics used gave the opportunity to the users holding the mugs at a jug to actually kind of look at them up close and in their hands and bring these scaled on images closer to their eyes. So they invited a very different kind of political engagement and representation in comparison to textual forms of print in a historical moment when many were still not literate and they also acted as decorative colorful items in displays or writing up domestic interiors and taverns, et cetera. And through songs, toasts, or ballads many may have acted as key agents in a performative ritual of political sovereignty. Ceramics then as visual and material objects had the potential to play a key role in the broader understanding of domestic power during the 17th century in Britain. And how this was essentially disseminated through a broader range of social classes. And I think we only need to look at a handful of these pieces from this era to see the role that ceramic squares were playing in recording, making and commemorating history during this time. And today I think they allow us to imagine the past even just a bit more vividly. Thank you.