Nene Valley Colour Coated Ware (or Castor Ware [1] ) is a type of Romano-British ceramic produced in the lower Nene Valley centred on Durobrivae (Water Newton) [2] from the mid-2nd to 4th centuries AD. The closest city is Peterborough, which vies with Northampton, Wisbech and London museums as a main repository and exhibition location of finds, arguably the most impressive of which are at the British Museum. The name of this type of ceramic is often abbreviated to NVCC. [3]
Pottery manufacture locally started in the mid first century AD, with workshops associated with the Roman fort at Longthorpe, Peterborough [1] [4] with an expansion for several miles along the Nene valley between Wansford and Peterborough in the second century. [1] The production centre was at the Roman town at Durobrivae (Water Newton) [1] although the NVCC products are associated with a number of kilns found throughout the area [5] at Stibbington, [6] Sibson-cum-Stibbington, Chesterton, [7] Yaxley, [8] and Stanground. [9]
The NVCC ceramic is a hard, smooth-textured fabric with finely irregular fracture. [5] It is usually coloured white to off-white. The slip has a variable colour, dark brown to black, mottled lighter orange or orange-brown where thinner. The temper includes an abundant amount of very fine quartz sand and occasional larger quartz grains, red or orange and black flecks and occasional pale clay pellets.
The decoration of NVCC vessels is quite distinctive. The most common forms are beakers; both cornice-rimmed and bag-beakers. [3] Where decoration occurs it includes barbotine (both under and over the slip), rouletting and grooving. [2] Hunt scenes in barbotine decoration are well known from the earlier part of the industry, with the use of whorls instead of these beginning in the 3rd century AD. [3]
The following institutions are listed as having considerable collections of NVCC Ware collections:
Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a potter is also called a pottery. The definition of pottery, used by the ASTM International, is "all fired ceramic wares that contain clay when formed, except technical, structural, and refractory products". End applications include tableware, decorative ware, sanitaryware, and in technology and industry such as electrical insulators and laboratory ware. In art history and archaeology, especially of ancient and prehistoric periods, pottery often means vessels only, and sculpted figurines of the same material are called terracottas.
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Terra sigillata is a term with at least three distinct meanings: as a description of medieval medicinal earth; in archaeology, as a general term for some of the fine red Ancient Roman pottery with glossy surface slips made in specific areas of the Roman Empire; and more recently, as a description of a contemporary studio pottery technique supposedly inspired by ancient pottery. Usually roughly translated as 'sealed earth', the meaning of 'terra sigillata' is 'clay bearing little images', not 'clay with a sealed (impervious) surface'. The archaeological term is applied, however, to plain-surfaced pots as well as those decorated with figures in relief.
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Slipware is pottery identified by its primary decorating process where slip is placed onto the leather-hard (semi-hardened) clay body surface before firing by dipping, painting or splashing. Slip is an aqueous suspension of a clay body, which is a mixture of clays and other minerals such as quartz, feldspar and mica. The slip placed onto a wet or leather-hard clay body surface by a variety of techniques including dipping, painting, piping or splashing. Slipware is the pottery on which slip has been applied either for glazing or decoration. Slip is liquified clay or clay slurry, with no fixed ratio of water and clay, which is used either for joining pottery pieces together by slip casting with mould, glazing or decorating the pottery by painting or dipping the pottery with slip.
Castor is a village and civil parish in the City of Peterborough unitary authority, about 4 miles (6.4 km) west of the city centre. The parish is part of the former Soke of Peterborough, which was considered part of Northamptonshire until 1888 and then Huntingdon and Peterborough from 1965 to 1974, when it became part of Cambridgeshire.
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Barbotine is the French for ceramic slip, or a mixture of clay and water used for moulding or decorating pottery. In English the term is used for three different techniques of decorating pottery, though in all cases mainly for historical works. For clarity, these types are numbered here as A-C.
A slip is a clay slurry used to produce pottery and other ceramic wares. Liquified clay, in which there is no fixed ratio of water and clay, is called slip or clay slurry which is used either for joining leather-hard (semi-hardened) clay body together by slipcasting with mould, glazing or decorating the pottery by painting or dipping the pottery with slip. Pottery on which slip has been applied either for glazing or decoration is called the slipware.
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