Traditional Early American Dinnerware

Deep British Roots

• Transporting household goods across the ocean to New England was tricky business. Homemakers packed the family dinnerware for the voyage to America according to their social status: The wealthy owned both pewter and fine china produced in France, Italy and England, while folks with few assets had only the pewter used for everyday meals. Pewter had been heavily regulated by the British government since 1348. King Edward IV was so protective of the British pewter industry, he named a "Mistery of Pewterers" to keep tabs on companies producing the dinnerware and service pieces.

America Recycles Dinnerware

• Early American settlers coveted their English pewter and European china, but as the political struggle to separate from the old country grew, some citizens were eager to divorce themselves from reliance upon all British goods. Professional pewter designers, many of whom trained at the Worshipful Company of Pewterers in England, emigrated to America and set up shop in Massachusetts’ Bay Colony; but soon they found themselves unable to get raw materials. Thanks to American ingenuity and the limited life cycle of pewter, a cottage industry emerged, as plates, goblets and serving dishes in disrepair were melted down and reshaped into new pieces.

The Pewter Crisis

• By the 1600s, even the most efficiently recycled pewter dinnerware began to disappear, which made it even more valuable to Early American consumers. Prices skyrocketed as scarcity pervaded. It took 300 tons annually of English pewter dinnerware to satisfy American appetites throughout the 1600s, and by 1720, Robert W. Symonds wrote, "the value of pewter imports from England began to exceed the combined totals of the value of silver objects, furniture, upholstery wares, including bedding, curtains, carpets, hangings, and upholstered furniture." While wealthy Americans continued to import fine china from Europe, settlers with meager resources used the wood of indigenous trees to make their plates, cups and bowls.

Independence at Last

• As the War of Independence was waged, families donated pewter dinnerware to the army so metalsmiths could produce musket balls. This ostensibly brought to an end the nation’s fixation on pewter dinnerware. In its place, a domestic pressed glass industry emerged, giving families an inexpensive alternative to the metal. Once postwar tensions between the United States and England eased, the nations reestablished business relationships, but this time, it was a two-way street: England shipped pottery-based dinnerware originating in its Staffordshire district, and the United States exported dinnerware from the new nation’s stoneware, pottery and china “capitol,” New England.