Spent 3 years trying to sort out a pottery sherd that looked Roman but wasn't

Finally got it identified as 18th century glazed earthenware from a specific factory in Staffordshire after a retired curator at the local museum took one look. Anyone else have a common artifact that kept fooling everyone for way too long?

3 comments

3 Comments

hannah_west3916h ago

Ngl, that retired curator probably saved you years more of frustration with that one glance. Those Staffordshire factories made so much stuff that looks way older than it actually is, especially with their glazes that mimic earlier techniques. Tbh, I bet half the "Roman" pottery in small museums is actually 18th or 19th century stuff that just got labeled wrong decades ago.

jessem5915h ago

Yeah that's a really good point about the mislabeled museum stuff. I saw a vase in a local history museum that was marked "Roman 2nd century" and an old professor friend pointed out the cobalt blue glaze gave it away as 1800s Staffordshire in about two seconds.

ryan7939h ago

Cobalt blue's actually a giveaway for 19th century, not 1800s Staffordshire.