Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?: Tablewares, Teawares and Social Interaction at an Australian Outback Pastoral Homestead 9781407355504, 9781407355610

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
LEICESTER ARCHAEOLOGY MONOGRAPHS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables
List of Figures
Foreword and Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: Micro-archaeological Approaches and the Old Kinchega Homestead
2. Britishness, Gentility and Hospitality in Australian Society
3. Social Interaction and Social Networks in Outback NSW, Australia
4. Collecting, Collating and Characterising the Ceramic Fineware Remains from the Old Kinchega Homestead
5. Tableware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead
6. Teaware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead
7. Purchasing Tablewares and Teawares for the Kinchega Pastoral Estate: Price, Cost, Quality and Value
8. Comparing Australian Households for Social Status and Social Aspirations through their Ceramic Sets
9. Who Would Have Come to Dinner and Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead: Opportunities for Social Interaction and Social Networking
10. Concluding Discussion
Bibliography
Appendices
Index

Citation preview

LEICESTER ARCHAEOLO GY MONO GRAPHS, 25 A D D I T I O N A L M AT E R I A L O N L I N E

B A R I N T E R NAT I O NA L S E R I E S 2 9 6 4

2020

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Tablewares, Teawares and Social Interaction at an Australian Outback Pastoral Homestead

PENELOPE M. ALLISON AND VIRGINIA ESPOSITO

210mm WIDTH

LEICESTER ARCHAEOLO GY MONO GRAPHS, 25

297mm HIGH

B A R I N T E R NAT I O NA L S E R I E S 2 9 6 4

2020

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Tablewares, Teawares and Social Interaction at an Australian Outback Pastoral Homestead

PENELOPE M. ALLISON AND VIRGINIA ESPOSITO

210 x 297mm BAR Allison TITLE Artwork.indd 4

17/1/20 5:00 PM

Published in 2020 by BAR Publishing, Oxford BAR International Series 2964 Leicester Archaeology Monographs, 25 Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Tablewares, Teawares and Social Interaction at an Australian Outback Pastoral Homestead ISBN 978 1 4073 5550 4 paperback ISBN 978 1 4073 5561 0 e-format doi https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407355504 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library © Penelope M. Allison and Virginia Esposito 2020 Cover image Cat. no. DD/586/0027, remains of an earthenware saucer decorated with green transfer-printed pattern. (KARP photo.) The Author’s moral rights under the 1988 UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act are hereby expressly asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be copied, reproduced, stored, sold, distributed, scanned, saved in any form of digital format or transmitted in any form digitally, without the written permission of the Publisher. Links to third party websites are provided by BAR Publishing in good faith and for information only. BAR Publishing disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

BAR titles are available from: BAR Publishing 122 Banbury Rd, Oxford, ox2 7bp, uk Email [email protected] Phone +44 (0)1865 310431 Fax +44 (0)1865 316916 www.barpublishing.com

LEICESTER ARCHAEOLOGY MONOGRAPHS School of Archaeology & Ancient History University of Leicester www.le.ac.uk/ar/ Series Editor D. Graham J. Shipley Editorial Board Richard J. Buckley, OBE David N. Edwards Sarah A. Scott John S. Thomas

Contents List of Tables..................................................................................................................................................................... ix List of Figures................................................................................................................................................................... xi Foreword and Acknowledgements............................................................................................................................... xviii 1. Introduction: Micro-archaeological Approaches and the Old Kinchega Homestead................................................. 1 The Old Kinchega Homestead and the west Darling region......................................................................................................1 The Kinchega Archaeological Research Project...........................................................................................................................4 Household consumption and social practices..............................................................................................................................4 Material culture, new materialism and social agency.................................................................................................................7 Global history, social history, microhistory and micro-archaeology........................................................................................8 Monograph outline..........................................................................................................................................................................9 2. Britishness, Gentility and Hospitality in Australian Society..................................................................................... 13 Introduction....................................................................................................................................................................................13 The concept of Britishness............................................................................................................................................................13 Britishness and social codes in Australia – manners, gentility and changing attitudes.......................................................14 Britishness and hospitality in rural Australia and the outback................................................................................................16 Tea-drinking, gentility and Australian society...........................................................................................................................18 Britishness and material culture in rural Australia...................................................................................................................19 Conclusions.....................................................................................................................................................................................22 3. Social Interaction and Social Networks in Outback NSW, Australia......................................................................... 25 Changing transport and communication systems in the west Darling region......................................................................25 Opportunities for social interaction in the Australian outback: women’s diaries and letters..............................................27 Summary.........................................................................................................................................................................................31 4. Collecting, Collating and Characterising the Ceramic Fineware Remainsfrom the Old Kinchega Homestead..... 33 Collecting and recording the ceramic fineware remains from OKH......................................................................................33 Identifying and dating the finewares...........................................................................................................................................34 Fabrics........................................................................................................................................................................................34 Makers’ marks...........................................................................................................................................................................35 Decorative motifs......................................................................................................................................................................36 Profiles........................................................................................................................................................................................36 Identifying tableware and teaware sets from the Old Kinchega Homestead.........................................................................37 Identifying vessels and their uses.................................................................................................................................................39 Approaches to identifying social value among the Old Kinchega Homestead tableware and teaware sets.......................42 5. Tableware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead......................................................................................................... 45 Earthenware....................................................................................................................................................................................45 Pre-1890 (Appendix 2a)...........................................................................................................................................................45 Willow pattern transfer print..............................................................................................................................................45 Albion pattern transfer print..............................................................................................................................................45 Asiatic Pheasant pattern transfer print.............................................................................................................................46 Rhine pattern transfer print................................................................................................................................................46 Cable pattern transfer print................................................................................................................................................48 Mid-blue band-and-line pattern........................................................................................................................................48 Other transfer-printed patterns.........................................................................................................................................49 1890–1955 (Appendices 2b–c)................................................................................................................................................49 Cuba pattern transfer print................................................................................................................................................49 Dark blue-banded decoration............................................................................................................................................51 Relief-moulded decoration.................................................................................................................................................52 Plain white body, clear glaze..............................................................................................................................................58 Blue dyed-body, clear glaze................................................................................................................................................61 v

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Miscellaneous tablewares...................................................................................................................................................62 Summary.........................................................................................................................................................................................63 6. Teaware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead............................................................................................................ 65 Probably pre-1890 (Appendix 3a)................................................................................................................................................65 Earthenware...............................................................................................................................................................................65 Blue transfer-printed and sponge-printed patterns........................................................................................................65 Black transfer-printed patterns..........................................................................................................................................66 Purple transfer-printed patterns........................................................................................................................................67 Green transfer-printed patterns.........................................................................................................................................67 Brown transfer-printed patterns........................................................................................................................................68 Red transfer-printed patterns.............................................................................................................................................68 Bone china.................................................................................................................................................................................68 Blue sprig pattern.................................................................................................................................................................68 1890–1955.......................................................................................................................................................................................69 Earthenware...............................................................................................................................................................................69 ‘White and gold’...................................................................................................................................................................71 Plain white body, clear glaze..............................................................................................................................................71 Unknown decoration..........................................................................................................................................................71 Transfer-printed...................................................................................................................................................................71 Plain cream body, clear glaze.............................................................................................................................................71 Dyed-body, clear glaze........................................................................................................................................................71 Teapots..................................................................................................................................................................................71 Bone china.................................................................................................................................................................................72 ‘White and gold’...................................................................................................................................................................72 Plain, clear glaze...................................................................................................................................................................72 Fluted, clear glaze................................................................................................................................................................74 Porcelain.....................................................................................................................................................................................74 ‘White and gold’...................................................................................................................................................................74 Plain, clear glaze...................................................................................................................................................................76 Probably post-1890 (Appendix 3a)..............................................................................................................................................76 Earthenware...............................................................................................................................................................................76 ‘White and gold’...................................................................................................................................................................76 Plain, white body, clear glaze.............................................................................................................................................78 Decaled.................................................................................................................................................................................78 Bone china.................................................................................................................................................................................78 ‘White and gold’...................................................................................................................................................................78 Plain, clear glaze...................................................................................................................................................................79 Decaled.................................................................................................................................................................................80 Porcelain.....................................................................................................................................................................................80 ‘White and gold’...................................................................................................................................................................80 Plain, clear glaze...................................................................................................................................................................83 Decaled.................................................................................................................................................................................85 Summary of post-1890 and probably post-1890 teawares..................................................................................................86 ‘White and gold’ and plain white teawares.......................................................................................................................86 Undated...........................................................................................................................................................................................88 Earthenware...............................................................................................................................................................................88 Dyed-body, clear glaze........................................................................................................................................................88 White body, coloured glaze................................................................................................................................................88 Other decorated earthenware............................................................................................................................................88 Decorated bone china and porcelain......................................................................................................................................89 Teapots....................................................................................................................................................................... 89 Summary.........................................................................................................................................................................................90 7. Purchasing Tablewares and Teawares for the Kinchega Pastoral Estate: Price, Cost, Quality and Value................. 93 Availability and distribution of ceramics in Australia...............................................................................................................93 Cost, quality and potential value in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century trade catalogues.........................................94 The Kinchega Pastoral Estate bookkeeping records..................................................................................................................96 Purchasing of tablewares by the Kinchega Estate (Appendix 5)........................................................................................96

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Contents Purchasing of teawares by the Kinchega Estate..................................................................................................................100 Cup sizes and occasions for drinking tea or coffee..................................................................................................................102 Cost, quality and social value of the OKH tablewares............................................................................................................103 Cost, quality and social value of the OKH teawares................................................................................................................104 Shape and relative costs and value........................................................................................................................................105 Quality of fabric and decoration and relative value...........................................................................................................106 Summary.......................................................................................................................................................................................107 8. Comparing Australian Households for Social Status and Social Aspirations through their Ceramic Sets........... 109 Introduction..................................................................................................................................................................................109 Comparative urban and semi-rural sites in Australia.............................................................................................................110 ‘Working-class’ urban households........................................................................................................................................110 The Rocks, Sydney.............................................................................................................................................................110 Government House, Sydney – the servants’ quarters...................................................................................................111 Port Adelaide, South Australia.........................................................................................................................................111 Working-class rural households...........................................................................................................................................112 Dolly’s Creek, Victoria......................................................................................................................................................112 Middle-class semi-rural households....................................................................................................................................112 The Lake Innes Estate, near Port Macquarie..................................................................................................................112 ‘Viewbank’, near Melbourne.............................................................................................................................................112 Bean’s Parsonage, Gippsland, Victoria............................................................................................................................112 Comparative analyses..................................................................................................................................................................113 Tablewares................................................................................................................................................................................113 Teawares...................................................................................................................................................................................117 Summary.......................................................................................................................................................................................120 Concluding comments................................................................................................................................................................121 9. Who Would Have Come to Dinner and Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead: Opportunities for Social Interaction and Social Networking............................................................................................................................... 123 Introduction..................................................................................................................................................................................123 The occupants of the Old Kinchega Homestead......................................................................................................................123 Opportunities for social interactions – visitors?......................................................................................................................126 Pre-1890...................................................................................................................................................................................126 Post-1890.................................................................................................................................................................................127 Stopping at OKH for dinner or tea............................................................................................................................................129 Pre-1890...................................................................................................................................................................................130 Dinner guests.....................................................................................................................................................................130 Guests for tea......................................................................................................................................................................130 c.1890–c.1915..........................................................................................................................................................................132 Dinner guests.....................................................................................................................................................................132 Guests for tea......................................................................................................................................................................133 1915 to the end of the 1930s..................................................................................................................................................134 Dinner guests.....................................................................................................................................................................134 Guests to tea.......................................................................................................................................................................135 1940s–1955..............................................................................................................................................................................137 Dinner guests.....................................................................................................................................................................137 Guests to tea.......................................................................................................................................................................138 Serving tea or coffee at OKH......................................................................................................................................................138 The place of the OKH occupants in the social hierarchies of western NSW and Australia...............................................138 Summary.......................................................................................................................................................................................141 10. Concluding Discussion........................................................................................................................................... 143 Investigating social behaviour in historical archaeology........................................................................................................147 Contributions to Australian social history...............................................................................................................................152 Contributions to singularised approaches and connected social histories..........................................................................154 Summary.......................................................................................................................................................................................156 Bibliography.................................................................................................................................................................. 157 Unpublished reports and manuscripts......................................................................................................................................157

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Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Newspapers, magazines and other archives..............................................................................................................................157 Mail order catalogues..................................................................................................................................................................158 Publications...................................................................................................................................................................................158 Appendices Appendices 2–8 are available to download from www.barpublishing.com/additional-downloads.html Appendix 1 Abbreviations and Glossary..................................................................................................................................169 Appendix 2 Tablewares Appendix 3 Teawares Appendix 4 Teawares and/or Tablewares Appendix 5 Kinchega Estate Tableware Purchases Appendix 6 Kinchega Estate Cups and Saucers Purchases Appendix 7 Kinchega Estate Teapots and Coffee Pots Appendix 8 Kinchega Estate Tea and Coffee Purchases Appendix 9 Comparative Quantities of Types of Tablewares and Teawaresand their Likely Sets among   Dwellings at Several Australian Sites....................................................................................................................................171 Appendix 10 Known Occupants and Likely Occupants of the Old Kinchega Homestead................................................175 Appendix 11 Figures....................................................................................................................................................................177 Index.............................................................................................................................................................................. 213

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List of Tables Table 4.1. Numbers of sherds and MNVs of tableware and teaware vessels recorded from OKH, with their approximate dates................................................................................................................................................................................38 Table 4.2. Documented vessel functions, names and related sizes as relevant to this study.....................................................40 Table 5.1. Tableware vessels with blue Willow pattern transfer print...........................................................................................45 Table 5.2. Tableware vessels with blue Albion pattern transfer print............................................................................................46 Table 5.3. Tableware vessels with Asiatic Pheasant pattern transfer print...................................................................................46 Table 5.4. Tableware vessels with grey Rhine pattern transfer print.............................................................................................47 Table 5.5. Tableware vessels with purple Cable pattern transfer print.........................................................................................48 Table 5.6. Tableware vessels with mid-blue band-and-line pattern..............................................................................................48 Table 5.7. Tableware vessels with other probable nineteenth-century patterns..........................................................................50 Table 5.8. Cuba pattern transfer-printed tableware set..................................................................................................................51 Table 5.9. Dark blue-banded tablewares marked Empire ware or Meakin..................................................................................52 Table 5.10. Dark blue–banded tablewares without evidence of makers’ marks..........................................................................53 Table 5.11. Bases marked Meakin without evidence of decoration..............................................................................................53 Table 5.12. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims with a relief-moulded feather pattern, some with Meakin mark............54 Table 5.13. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims with a relief-moulded fan-and-scallop pattern decoration, some with Woods and Sons Ltd mark..............................................................................................................................................55 Table 5.14. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims with a relief-moulded shell pattern, some with Nippon Koshitsu Toki Co. mark......................................................................................................................................................................56 Table 5.15. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims decorated with a relief-moulded pattern of beads and starburst daisies(?), some with Wood & Sons Ltd mark.................................................................................................................................56 Table 5.16. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims decorated with a relief-moulded pattern of beading and a raised band...........................................................................................................................................................................................57 Table 5.17. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims decorated with a relief-moulded stylised floral spray pattern.................57 Table 5.18. Tableware vessels with gilt-edged and scalloped rims decorated with an unidentifiable reliefmoulded pattern..................................................................................................................................................................................57 Table 5.19. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims decorated with a relief-moulded festoon-and-shield pattern.................57 Table 5.20. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims decorated with a relief-moulded pattern of beads, ‘S’ scrolls and circles.............................................................................................................................................................................................57 Table 5.21. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims decorated with a relief-moulded pattern of thin lines and ‘C’ scrolls....58 Table 5.22. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims decorated with a relief-moulded pattern of vertical ridges above a pendant scroll........................................................................................................................................................................58 Table 5.23. Tableware vessels with other relief-moulded patterns................................................................................................59 Table 5.24. Plain white, clear-glazed, 12-sided tableware vessels, some with Johnson Bros mark...........................................60 Table 5.25. Plain white, clear-glazed, circular and oval tableware vessels, some with Meakin and Johnson Bros marks.....61 Table 5.26. Blue dyed-body tableware vessels with clear glaze......................................................................................................62 Table 5.27. Miscellaneous vessel forms, patterns and bases, likely to be tableware....................................................................62 ix

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 5.28. Types and quantities of tableware vessels from OKH.................................................................................................63 Table 6.1. Earthenware teaware vessels with blue transfer-printed and sponge-printed patterns, probably dating prior to 1890.........................................................................................................................................................................................66 Table 6.2. Earthenware teaware vessels with black transfer-printed patterns, probably dating prior to 1890........................66 Table 6.3. Earthenware teaware vessels with purple transfer-printed patterns, probably dating prior to 1890......................67 Table 6.4. Earthenware teaware vessels with green transfer-printed patterns, probably dating prior to 1890.......................68 Table 6.5. Earthenware teaware vessels with brown transfer-printed patterns, probably dating prior to 1890......................68 Table 6.6. Earthenware teaware vessels with red transfer-printed patterns, probably dating prior to 1890...........................69 Table 6.7. Bone china teaware vessels with blue Chelsea Sprig or Chelsea Grape pattern, probably dating prior to 1890.....69 Table 6.8. Earthenware teaware vessels with a refined white, cream, or dyed-body fabric, dated after 1890.........................70 Table 6.9. Earthenware teapots, datable after 1890.........................................................................................................................72 Table 6.10. Bone china teaware vessels with ‘white and gold’ decoration, with marks dating to the twentieth century.......73 Table 6.11. Plain white bone china teaware vessels, with marks dating to the twentieth century............................................74 Table 6.12. Plain white bone china teaware vessels, with fluted bodies and makers’ marks dating to the twentieth century..................................................................................................................................................................................................75 Table 6.13. Porcelain teaware vessels with ‘white and gold’ decoration, with marks dating to the twentieth century..........75 Table 6.14. Plain white porcelain teaware vessels, with marks dating to the twentieth century...............................................77 Table 6.15. Earthenware teaware vessels with ‘white and gold’ decoration, probably dating after 1890.................................78 Table 6.16. Plain white earthenware teaware vessels, probably dating after 1890.......................................................................79 Table 6.17. Decaled earthenware teaware vessel, probably dating after 1890..............................................................................79 Table 6.18. ‘White and gold’ bone china, probably dating after 1890...........................................................................................80 Table 6.19. Plain white bone china, probably dating after 1890....................................................................................................81 Table 6.20. Bone china decaled teaware vessel probably dating after 1890.................................................................................81 Table 6.21. Porcelain teaware vessels with ‘white and gold’ decoration, probably dating after 1890.......................................82 Table 6.22. Plain white porcelain teaware vessels, probably dating after 1890............................................................................84 Table 6.23. Porcelain teaware vessels with decaled decoration, probably dating after 1890......................................................86 Table 6.24. Combined total of post-1890 and probably post-1890 plain and ‘white and gold’ teaware vessels......................87 Table 6.25. Undated decorated earthenware teawares....................................................................................................................88 Table 6.26. Undated decorated bone china and porcelain teawares.............................................................................................89 Table 6.27. Undated earthenware teapots.........................................................................................................................................90 Table 7.1. Teacup shapes recorded at OKH and compared with similar examples from Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd trade catalogues.................................................................................................................................................................106 Table 8.1. Ratios of numbers of tableware sets to sherds and vessel counts, and percentages of large plates in the tableware assemblages (unless indicated otherwise) at each site................................................................................................114 Table 8.2. Ratios of numbers of teaware sets to sherd and vessel counts, at each site..............................................................117

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List of Figures Figures in Main Text Figure 1. Map of western NSW showing location of the Old Kinchega Homestead...................................................................2 Figure 2. Sketch plan of homestead by Peter Beven, annotated by E. Gwynne Hughes – ‘EGH’ (1998)..................................3 Figure 3. Pencil and wash drawing of the Old Kinchega Homestead, dated 1878.......................................................................3 Figure 4. North-east and central part of area surveyed by KARP..................................................................................................5 Figure 5. Area of rubbish dump (DD) at the Old Kinchega Homestead, indicating discrete dumping events that were identified as individual contexts.................................................................................................................................................6 Figure 6. Three women and one man taking tea from ‘pretty china’ in the garden at Morden Station, 1909.........................20 Figure 7. Picnic at Salmon Ponds, Tasmania, 1910.........................................................................................................................20 Figure 8. From left: Emily Kent, Jack Johnson (holding baby), William Kent and Gertrude Johnson sharing tea at the Mount Margaret goldfields, Western Australia, 1897..........................................................................................................26 Figure 9. The dinner table at ‘Tarella’, 1909......................................................................................................................................30 Figure 10. View of west side of the Old Kinchega Homestead. From left: Florence Hawker, ‘Sissie’ (Laura Sophia Hughes), H. B. Hughes, Edgar Hughes, possibly a cook, and Harold Hughes. Photo probably taken in 1890....................124 Figure 11. Albert, Linda and Peter Beven and an unidentified man, seated on the east verandah of the Old Kinchega Homestead........................................................................................................................................................................126 Figures in Appendix 11 Figure 12. Cat. no. A02Ver/56/0097, earthenware plate with blue transfer-printed Willow pattern, showing profile........177 Figure 13. Cat. no. DD/588/0006, earthenware plate with blue transfer-printed Albion pattern...........................................177 Figure 14. Cat. no. DD/590/0007, rim fragment of an earthenware plate with blue transfer-printed Albion pattern.........178 Figure 15. Cat. no. DD/507.09/0066, rim fragment from an earthenware plate with blue transfer-printed Asiatic Pheasant pattern, showing deep well and pattern.........................................................................................................................178 Figure 16. Cat. no. A02XVer/123/0018, rim fragment from an earthenware soup plate with blue transfer-printed Asiatic Pheasant pattern, showing a greyish pattern colour........................................................................................................178 Figure 17. Cat. no. A02XVer/123/0018, earthenware soup plate with blue transfer-printed Asiatic Pheasant pattern, showing angular shoulder.................................................................................................................................................178 Figure 18. Cat. nos. DD/534/0011a and b, fragments from two earthenware plates with a grey transfer-printed Rhine pattern......................................................................................................................................................................................179 Figure 19. Cat. no. DD/534/0011b, base fragment of an earthenware plate, with grey Rhine pattern, with black maker’s mark: ‘BROWNFIELD & SONS (in banner)/ TRADE MARK (across twin globes)’...............................................179 Figure 20. Cat. no. DD/534/0011a, base fragment of an earthenware plate with grey Rhine pattern, and impressed date mark, probably ‘12/ 87’..........................................................................................................................................179 Figure 21. Cat. no. DD/534/0011a, earthenware plate, with grey transfer-printed Rhine pattern.........................................180 Figure 22. Cat. no. DD/507.01/0001a, rim and base fragment from an earthenware plate with a grey transferprinted Rhine pattern, with people in boats...................................................................................................................................180 Figure 23. Cat. no. DD/599/0005, fragments from an earthenware plate with a grey transfer-printed Rhine pattern, with people in boats...........................................................................................................................................................180

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Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Figure 24. Cat. no. DD/507.05/0033, fragment from well of an earthenware plate with a grey transfer-printed Rhine pattern, with people in boats................................................................................................................................................181 Figure 25. Cat. no. DD/507.05/0034a, rim and base fragment from an earthenware plate with mid-blue bandand-line pattern.................................................................................................................................................................................181 Figure 26. Cat. no. DD/556/0029, fragments from an earthenware plate with purple transfer-printed Cable pattern.......181 Figure 27. Cat. no. DD/556/0029, earthenware plate with purple transfer-printed Cable pattern.........................................181 Figure 28. Cat. no. A02Ver/056/0098, fragment from an earthenware serving dish with blue transfer-printed pattern of band of beads, rosette and ribbon band.......................................................................................................................181 Figure 29. Cat. no. A02Ver/056/0098, fragment from an earthenware serving dish with blue transfer-printed pattern of band of beads, rosette and ribbon band.......................................................................................................................181 Figure 30. Cat. no. DD/549/0009, rim fragment from an earthenware serving-dish lid with a brown transfer print with a vine and daisy pattern in fence/trellis.......................................................................................................................182 Figure 31. Cat. no. DD/574/0004, rim fragment of an earthenware plate decorated with blue transfer-printed Two Temples pattern......................................................................................................................................................................... 182 Figure 32. Cat. no. DD/509.15/0146, a large rim fragment from an earthenware soup plate with blue-green transfer-printed Cuba pattern, showing marly..............................................................................................................................182 Figure 33. Cat. no. DD/509.12/0114, base fragment from an earthenware soup plate with blue-green maker’s mark: ‘POUNTNEY & CO LD/ CUBA (in an oval garter)’...........................................................................................................182 Figure 34. Cat. no. DD/548/0015, rim fragment from an earthenware serving-dish lid with brown transfer print with asymmetrical vegetal pattern..................................................................................................................................................182 Figure 35. Cat. no. DD/573/0017d, rim fragment from a small oval earthenware gravy boat, with a dark bluebanded and gilded rim and gilded decoration on the body........................................................................................................182 Figure 36. Cat. no. DD/535/0014, base of a dark blue-banded earthenware soup plate with part of green maker’s mark: ‘… EMPIRE …’.......................................................................................................................................................................183 Figure 37. Cat. no. DD/573/0016, oval base fragment from a dark blue-banded earthenware gravy boat with a gilded line around the base and remains of green maker’s mark: ‘E[MPIRE WARE]/ E.P.CO./ (crown)/ STOKEON-TRENT/ 9 ENGLAND 28’.......................................................................................................................................................183 Figure 38. Cat. no. DD/510.13/0085b, dark blue-banded earthenware plate with green maker’s mark: ‘EMPIRE WARE/ (crown)/ … TRENT (in banner)’.....................................................................................................................................183 Figure 39. Cat. no. DD/510.13/0085b, base fragment from a dark blue-banded earthenware plate with remains of green maker’s mark: ‘EMPIRE WARE/ (crown)/ … TRENT (in banner)’...........................................................................183 Figure 40. Cat. no. DD/510.11/0075, base fragment from a dark blue-banded earthenware plate with green maker’s mark: ‘EMPIRE W …/ (crown)/ STOKE-ON-TRE … / 1 ENGLAND 3’...................................................................183 Figure 41. Cat. no. DD/537/0009, dark blue-banded earthenware plate with Empire ware base mark................................184 Figure 42. Cat. no. DD/510.07/0050, dark blue-banded earthenware plate..............................................................................184 Figure 43. Cat. no. DD/510.10/0067a, dark blue-banded earthenware plate with base mark: ‘… EMPIRE …’...................184 Figure 44. Cat. no. DD/817/0003, large rim and base fragment from a dark blue-banded earthenware plate with green maker’s mark: ‘[REGD] SOL 391413/ (rising sun face)/ J & G MEAKIN/ ENGLAND’..............................................184 Figure 45. Cat. no. DD/817/0003, dark blue-banded earthenware plate with green maker’s mark: ‘REGD SOL 391413/ (rising sun face)/ J & G MEAKIN/ ENGLAND’............................................................................................................185 Figure 46. Cat. nos. DD/573/0017a, b and c, dark blue-banded earthenware plate.................................................................185 Figure 47. Cat. no. DD/578/0005, remains of a dark blue-banded earthenware bowl.............................................................185 Figure 48. Cat. no. DD/578/0005, remains of a dark blue-banded earthenware bowl, showing profile................................185 Figure 49. Cat. no. DD/570/0020, large rim and base fragment from a dark blue-banded and gilded earthenware plate.186

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List of Figures Figure 50. Cat. no. DD/570/0020, dark blue-banded and gilded earthenware plate................................................................186 Figure 51. Cat. no. DD/577/0006b, an earthenware soup plate with relief-moulded feather pattern, showing profile.......186 Figure 52. Cat. no. DD/506.09/0043c, fragment of an earthenware plate with relief-moulded feather pattern, showing black maker’s mark: ‘IRONSTONE CHINA/ REGD SOL 391413/ (rising sun face)/ J & G MEAKIN/ ENGLAND’........................................................................................................................................................................................187 Figure 53. Cat. no. DD/506.09/0043c, earthenware plate with relief-moulded feather pattern and jigger marks on base.187 Figure 54. Cat. no. DD/819/0002, an earthenware plate with relief-moulded fan-and-scallop pattern................................188 Figure 55. Cat. no. DD/824/0001, large rim and base fragment of an earthenware plate with relief-moulded fan-and-scallop pattern, with green maker’s mark: ‘(crown)/ WOOD & SONS (in banner)/ BURSLEM/ ENGLAND’; and impressed mark ‘WS 1023’................................................................................................................................189 Figure 56. Cat. no. DD/824/0001, large rim and base fragment of an earthenware plate with relief-moulded fanand-scallop pattern, showing green base mark: ‘(crown)/ WOOD & SONS (in banner)/ BURSLEM/ ENGLAND’.........189 Figure 57. Cat. no. DD/824/0001, earthenware plate with relief-moulded fan-and-scallop pattern, and green maker’s mark: ‘(crown)/ WOOD & SONS (in banner)/ BURSLEM/ ENGLAND’..................................................................189 Figure 58. Cat. no. DD/513/0002a, two rim fragments from an earthenware plate with relief-moulded shell pattern......190 Figure 59. Cat. no. DD/578/0006, base and rim fragment of an earthenware plate with relief-moulded shell pattern, and green maker’s mark: ‘(crest with letters “K N/ A/ Z W” supported by two dragons in front of rayed sunburst)/ NIPPON KOSHITSU TOKI CO/ MADE IN JAPAN’, impressed ‘x’ below...........................................................190 Figure 60. Cat. no. DD/531/0005b, two rim fragments from an earthenware plate with relief-moulded beads and starburst (daisies?) pattern, and which had green maker’s mark: ‘(crown)/ WOOD & SONS LTD (in banner)/ ENGLAND’........................................................................................................................................................................................190 Figure 61. Relief-moulded patterns identified on the rims of different earthenware tableware vessels................................191 Figure 62. Cat. no. DD/522/0006, base of a complete earthenware plate, with relief-moulded bead pattern, showing black maker’s mark: ‘BY/ REGD SOL 391413/ (rising sun face)/ J & G MEAKIN/ ENGLAND/ 1851/ CENTENARY (in banner)/ 1951’...................................................................................................................................................192 Figure 63. Cat. no. DD/522/0010, base and rim fragments from an earthenware bowl with relief-moulded decoration, and black maker’s mark: ‘C/ SWINNERTONS/ (lamp)/ STAFFORDSHIRE/ ENG ...’.......................................192 Figure 64. Cat. no. DD/531/0007a, earthenware plate with relief decoration of a band of alternating daisies and dots....192 Figure 65. Cat. no. DD/549/0006, earthenware plate with relief-moulded ribbon-and-bow pattern....................................193 Figure 66. Cat. no. DD/509.10/0101a, two fragments from a white earthenware 12-sided plate...........................................194 Figure 67. Cat. no. DD/509.10/0101a, profile of white earthenware 12-sided plate.................................................................194 Figure 68. Cat. no. DD/814/0010, white earthenware 12-sided plate.........................................................................................194 Figure 69. Cat. no. DD/596/0009, remains of a plain white earthenware serving dish with green maker’s mark: ‘(crown)/ J & G MEAKIN/ HANLEY/ ENGLAND (all in banner)’..........................................................................................194 Figure 70. Cat. no. DD/801/0011, near complete plain white earthenware plate with black maker’s mark: ‘ROYAL IRONSTONE WARE/ (crown)/ JOHNSON BROS/ ENGLAND’...............................................................................194 Figure 71. Cat. no. DD/579/0014, plain white earthenware plate...............................................................................................195 Figure 72. Cat. no. DD/592/0011, fragments from rectangular blue dyed-body earthenware serving dish.........................195 Figure 73. Cat. no. DD/554/0001, fragment from the stem of a blue dyed-body earthenware vessel, possibly an egg cup................................................................................................................................................................................................195 Figure 74. Cat. no. A02/072/0048, blue dyed-body earthenware base fragment with black maker’s mark: ‘SWINNERT ... / (lamp)/ STAFFORDSHI[RE]/ MADE IN ENGL[AND]/ … CHELSE[A]’................................................195 Figure 75. Cat. no. DD/563/0007, white earthenware base fragment with black maker’s mark: ‘IRON … / J & G MEAKIN (in banner across sun face)/ REGD LIMITED 43758/ HANLEY ENGLAND’......................................................195

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Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Figure 76. Cat. no. DD/822/0016, exterior of rim fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with blue transfer-printed Honeysuckle pattern.............................................................................................................................................196 Figure 77. Cat. no. DD/822/0016, interior of rim fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with blue transfer-printed Honeysuckle pattern, showing blurring of transfer pattern.............................................................................196 Figure 78. Cat. no. DD/811/0017, exterior of rim fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with blue transfer-printed Honeysuckle pattern, showing misplacement of transfer print at rim...........................................................196 Figure 79. Cat. no. DD/811/0017, interior of rim fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with blue transfer-printed Honeysuckle pattern, showing blurring of transfer pattern.............................................................................196 Figure 80. Cat. no. DD/588/0007, remains of an earthenware cup decorated with blue transfer-printed pattern of palmettes in volute scrolls with a band of ovolos below..........................................................................................................196 Figure 81. Cat. no. DD/515/0002, fragment from an earthenware cup with blue transfer-printed floral pattern featuring volute urns.........................................................................................................................................................................196 Figure 82. Cat. no. A02X/117/0002, fragment from an earthenware saucer decorated with a flown blue spongeprinted pattern...................................................................................................................................................................................197 Figure 83. Cat. no. DD/580/0005, rim fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with black transfer-printed pattern of a voluted vegetal design on a linear background........................................................................................................197 Figure 84. Cat. no. DD/561/0003, base of remains of an earthenware saucer with black maker’s mark: ‘MAY FLOWER (in banner)/ J. M. & Co’..................................................................................................................................................197 Figure 85. Cat. no. DD/561/0003 and DD/592/0009, remains of an earthenware cup and saucer with black transfer-printed May Flower pattern...............................................................................................................................................197 Figure 86. Cat. no. DD/581/0002, fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with black transfer-printed pattern of meanders and floral design on exterior........................................................................................................................197 Figure 87. Cat. no. DD/581/0002, fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with black transfer-printed pattern of rosette flowers in a honeycomb pattern on the interior rim.....................................................................................197 Figure 88. Cat. no. DD/558/0015, fragment from an earthenware saucer decorated with purple transfer-printed pattern comprising a key fret at the rim, a purple band with twisted white ribbon inside, and a band of purple scrolls below.......................................................................................................................................................................................198 Figure 89. Cat. no. DD/561/0002, fragment from an earthenware saucer decorated with purple transfer-printed pattern comprising a band of diamonds above a band of squares at the rim with interlaced ribbon and floral festoons..198 Figure 90. Cat. no. DD/534/0017, rim fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with purple transferprinted pattern comprising a meander pattern on exterior below band and ovoids at rim, both inside and outside.........198 Figure 91. Cat. no. A02XVer/123/0009, fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with purple transferprinted slightly flown floral pattern................................................................................................................................................198 Figure 92. Cat. no. A02XVer/087/0011, fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with purple transferprinted pattern with leaves...............................................................................................................................................................199 Figure 93. Cat. no. DD/801/0007, base fragment from an earthenware saucer decorated with purple transferprinted pattern with vine leaves and voluted teardrops...............................................................................................................199 Figure 94. Cat. no. DD/583/0011, fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with green transfer-printed pattern of linked bunches of flowers below linear background..................................................................................................199 Figure 95. Cat. no. DD/599/0004, fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with green transfer-printed allover vegetal pattern...........................................................................................................................................................................199 Figure 96. Cat. nos. DD/507.15/0119 and R/710/0015, remains from an earthenware cup and saucer decorated with a brown transfer-printed pattern of alternating white dots and tulip-shaped flowers in a brown band at rim, and a vegetal pattern below.....................................................................................................................................................200 Figure 97. Cat. no. DD/556/0025, fragment from an earthenware cup with brown transfer-printed pattern of voluted vegetal bands below a brown rim......................................................................................................................................200

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List of Figures Figure 98. Cat. no. DD/582/0008, fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with a red transfer-printed pattern of a sailing boat in circular cartouche surrounded by coral/seaweed...........................................................................200 Figure 99. Cat. no. DD/553/0003, two rim fragments from an earthenware saucer decorated with a red transferprinted pattern of a vegetal pattern with ribbon...........................................................................................................................200 Figure 100. Cat. no. DD/811/0015, two rim fragments from an earthenware saucer decorated with a red transfer-printed pattern of triangles and stylised flowers and leaves.........................................................................................200 Figure 101. Cat. no. DD/556/0024, base fragment from a ‘white and gold’ earthenware saucer showing decoration of tea-leaf pattern in well, maker’s mark ‘GREEN & CO LTD/ (church)’..............................................................201 Figure 102. Cat. no. DD/556/0024 – base fragment from a ‘white and gold’ earthenware saucer with decoration of tea-leaf pattern, showing green maker’s mark ‘GREEN & CO LTD/ (church)’....................................................................201 Figure 103. Cat. no. DD/572/0007, white earthenware cup base with black maker’s mark ‘PHOENIX WARE/ MADE IN ENGLAND/ T. F. & S. LTD’..........................................................................................................................................201 Figure 104. Cat. no. DD/570/0010, large fragment of an earthenware saucer decorated with blue transferprinted Willow pattern......................................................................................................................................................................201 Figure 105. Cat. no. DD/570/0010, large fragment of an earthenware saucer decorated with blue transfer printed Willow pattern, showing part of maker’s mark of R. H. & S. L. Plant Ltd: ‘[Tuscan] China/[MAD]E IN ENGLAND’......202 Figure 106. Cat. no. DD/570/0010, profile of plate decorated with Willow pattern.................................................................202 Figure 107. Cat. no. DD/555/0009, fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with brown transfer-printed Wattle pattern.....................................................................................................................................................................................202 Figure 108. Cat. no. DD/524/0002, near complete pink dyed-body earthenware cup with rouletted rim and fluted upper body..............................................................................................................................................................................202 Figure 109. Cat. no. DD/522/0008, near complete dark yellow dyed-body earthenware cup with scalloped rim and slightly fluted upper section.....................................................................................................................................................203 Figure 110. Cat. no. DD/525/0008, near complete dark yellow dyed-body earthenware saucer, scalloped rim and slightly fluted upper section; black maker’s mark: ‘LABURNUM/ PETAL/ (rectangle frame containing sailing ship/ and) GRINDLEY/ ENGLAND’.............................................................................................................................................203 Figure 111. Cat. no. DD/822/0011, body and base fragments from a red-bodied earthenware teapot with brown glaze, with embossed base mark ‘ENGLAND’..............................................................................................................................203 Figure 112. Cat. no. DD/555/0008, fragment from upper body and rim of a red-bodied earthenware teapot with black glaze and enamelled hand-painted pattern.........................................................................................................................203 Figure 113. Cat. no. DD/805/0003, base fragment from a red-bodied earthenware teapot with black glaze with a gold maker’s mark: ‘S. JOHNSON … BRITANNIA POTTERY (in ring around figure of Britannia)/ No202195/ ENGLAND’........................................................................................................................................................................................204 Figure 114. Cat. no. DD/508.03/0025b, over half of a ‘white and gold’ bone china cup with straight flaring sides, decorated with gold line 20 mm below rim. Remains of green maker’s mark: ‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ MA[DE IN ENGLAND]’.................................................................................................................................................................204 Figure 115. Cat. no. DD/576/0017, remains of a cream-bodied earthenware teapot showing decal and gilded floral decoration, with a green maker’s mark: ‘QUALITY (in banner)/ (dragon on globe) ARTHUR WOOD (in banner across globe)/ ENGLAND’; an impressed mark alongside ‘ENGLAND/ 36’..............................................................204 Figure 116. Cat. no. DD/576/0017, base of a cream-bodied earthenware teapot with decal and gilded decoration, showing green maker’s mark: ‘QUALITY (in banner)/ (dragon on globe) ARTHUR WOOD (in banner across globe)/ ENGLAND’; an impressed mark alongside: ‘ENGLAND/ 36’......................................................................................204 Figure 117. Cat. no. DD/521/0005, remains of ‘white and gold’ bone china cup with olive-green maker’s mark: ‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ G.P & Co/ L./ MADE IN ENGLAND’................................................................................205 Figure 118. Cat. no. DD/594/0008, remains of a ‘white and gold’ bone china cup, with green maker’s mark: ‘GRAFTON CHINA/ A B J (in knot)/ & SONS/ ENGLAND’....................................................................................................205

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Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Figure 119. Cat. no. DD/525/0005, remains of a ‘white and gold’ bone china saucer decorated with gilt-edged rim and gold line 20 mm below rim, and gold tea-leaf pattern in well, with a maker’s mark: ‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ G.P & Co/ L./ MADE IN ENGLAND’...........................................................................................................205 Figure 120. Cat. no. DD/525/0005, remains of a ‘white and gold’ bone china saucer, with a gold tea-leaf pattern in well, showing green maker’s mark: ‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ G.P & Co/ L./ MADE IN ENGLAND’ .............205 Figure 121. Cat. no. DD/549/0005b, remains of a ‘white and gold’ bone china cup, with black maker’s mark: ‘PHOENIX/ ENGLISH/ CHINA’....................................................................................................................................................205 Figure 122. Cat. no. DD/510.09/0060, remains of a ‘white and gold’ bone china cup decorated with three gold lines 5–6 mm from rim, with black maker’s mark: ‘COLCLOUGH/ LONDON/ ENGLAND/ BONE CHINA’; and gold numbering, ‘150’...............................................................................................................................................................206 Figure 123. Cat. no. DD/572/0006, remains of a white bone china saucer with fluted body and rounded profile; radial ribbing and scalloped edge; with blue maker’s mark: ‘TUSCAN CHINA/ (winged crown)/ MADE IN ENGLAND’........................................................................................................................................................................................206 Figure 124. Cat. no. DD/565/0010, remains of fine-walled white bone china cup with fluted ovoid body, no foot, inset base............................................................................................................................................................................................206 Figure 125. Cat. no. DD/565/0010, remains of fine-walled white bone china cup with fluted ovoid body, no foot, inset base, showing olive-green maker’s mark: ‘TUSCAN CHINA/ (winged crown)/ MADE IN/ ENGLAND’................206 Figure 126. Cat. no. DD/540/0003, base from a ‘white and gold’ porcelain cup with tea-leaf pattern, showing an olive-green maker’s mark: ‘VICTORIA/ (crown)/ Czecho-Slovakia’.........................................................................................207 Figure 127. Cat. no. DD/570/0017, base from a ‘white and gold’ porcelain saucer with green maker’s mark: ‘Noritake/ (tree crest mark inside wreath)/ MADE IN JAPAN/ RADIANT’............................................................................207 Figure 128. Cat. no. DD/576/0020, remains of plain white porcelain saucer with red base mark: ‘CA (logo)/ JAPAN’.....207 Figure 129. Cat. no. DD/576/0021, fragment from the base of a plain white porcelain saucer with a red base mark inside shield: ‘SUPERIOR/ QUALITY/ MADE IN JAPAN’..............................................................................................207 Figure 130. Cat. no. DD/577/0004, fragment from base from a plain white porcelain cup with a turquoise base mark: ‘VICTORIA/ (crown)/ Czecho-Slovakia’............................................................................................................................208 Figure 131. Cat. no. DD/576/0038, remains of a straight-sided, plain white earthenware cup with an ear-shaped handle..................................................................................................................................................................................................208 Figure 132. Cat. no. DD/525/0007, fragment from an earthenware saucer with a pink and yellow floral decal pattern....208 Figure 133. Cat. no. DD/508.02/0015, remains of a straight-sided, plain white bone china cup with an earshaped handle....................................................................................................................................................................................208 Figure 134. Cat. no. A02Ver/056/0099, fragment from bone china cup with red decaled decoration..................................208 Figure 135. Cat. no. DD/555/0012, base and rim fragment from a ‘white and gold’ porcelain plate with a fluted and scalloped rim and base mark: ‘No. 27/ Australi[a]’...............................................................................................................209 Figure 136. Cat. no. DD/591/0003 remains of a ‘white and gold’ straight-sided and fine-walled porcelain cup with a voluted, ear-shaped ring handle with open bracket..........................................................................................................209 Figure 137. Cat. no. DD/822/0009, near complete ‘white and gold’ porcelain cup, ring handle with open bracket...........209 Figure 138. Cat. no. Y/602/0033, ear-shaped handle from a small porcelain cup, possibly a demitasse...............................209 Figure 139. Cat. no. DD/534/0007, two rim fragments from a porcelain saucer decorated with blue mottled decal design........................................................................................................................................................................................209 Figure 140. Cat. no. DD/571/0001, fragments of a porcelain saucer decorated with a polychrome floral decal pattern of leaves and bluebells and gilded lines............................................................................................................................210 Figure 141. Cat. no. DD/549/0015, four fragments from a porcelain bowl, possibly a sugar bowl, decorated with a red, blue and green Geisha Girl pattern.......................................................................................................................................210 Figure 142. Cat. no. DD/516/0001, two fragments from a porcelain teapot decorated with a polychrome decal floral design and a gilded line at the rim........................................................................................................................................210 xvi

List of Figures Figure 143. Cat. no. DD/811/0020, fragments from an earthenware saucer with a pale yellow glaze and horizontal ridging..............................................................................................................................................................................210 Figure 144. Cat. no. DD/536/0013a, fragments from an earthenware cup with blurred blue transfer-printed Willow pattern....................................................................................................................................................................................210 Figure 145. Cat. no. DD/586/0027, remains of an earthenware saucer decorated with green transfer-printed pattern of daisy-like flowers, snowdrops and possibly a butterfly..............................................................................................211 Figure 146. Cat. no. DD/513/0004, fragment from a bone china cup with a hand-painted floral decoration.....................211 Figure 147. Cat. no. DD/817/0002, large fragment of a porcelain cup decorated with a thick blue line at the rim.............211 Figure 148. Cat. no. DD/809/0001, rim and handle fragment of a porcelain cup decorated with gilded lines and a green band at the rim.....................................................................................................................................................................211 Figure 149. Cat. no. DD/511.12/0055, near complete orange-bodied, brown glazed earthenware teapot............................212 Figure 150. Cat. no. DD/570/0022, large fragment from porcelain cup decorated with a polychrome decal floral design and a gilded line at the rim..................................................................................................................................................212 Figure 151. Cat. no. DD/566/0004, remains of a ‘white and gold’ porcelain cup with slightly flaring sides and a block handle.......................................................................................................................................................................................212

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Foreword and Acknowledgements This monograph has developed out of the research of the Kinchega Archaeological Research Project (KARP).1 In 1995, I was invited to take part in an archaeological project on the Kinchega National Park, by Peter Grave (University of New England, Armidale) and Paul Rainbird (formerly of Sturt University and the University of Wales, Lampeter). The initial aspiration for this project was that it would concern the prehistory and pastoral history of the Kinchega National Park. However, the departure of Peter Grave at the project’s initiation, and then Paul Rainbird in 1997, meant that the resulting Kinchega Archaeological Research Project focused on my own specialisms in the realm of household archaeology. I am grateful to both these colleagues for inviting me to take part in this project, and particularly to Paul for his support and encouragement to continue with it.

and Anthropology, Australian National University. For their initial cataloguing and recording, between 2002 and 2009, I am grateful to Ian Pritchard and Aedeen Cremin. A report on the preliminary analyses of these ceramics was published in 2006 (Allison and Cremin 2006). In 2009 and 2010, Virginia Esposito and I carried out further cataloguing, photographing and analyses, with the assistance of students from the Australian National University. Also, in 2010, I undertook further research into the Kinchega Estate bookkeeping records, targeting entries related to consumer goods and particularly tablewares and teawares, with assistance from Aedeen Cremin, and Sophie and Katrina Bickford. During this research trip, all the artefacts from KARP were returned to the Kinchega National Park. I am grateful to these students, colleagues and friends for their support and assistance, and to the British Academy for funding for the research in 2009–10. I would also like to thank Fred and Pip Hughes for their support during this archival research at Kars Station, and particularly for providing accommodation for the team.

The fieldwork for KARP was undertaken as field schools for archaeology and cultural heritage students from the Charles Sturt University (1996), the University of Sydney (1996–2002), and the Australian National University (2002), directed first by Paul Rainbird, Sam Wickman and me (1996) and subsequently by me as sole director. The field seasons were funded by the respective universities, as well as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS – 1996), and the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (1998). We are grateful to these organisations for their support and to all the participants, of which there too many to be named individually, for their hard work, enthusiasm and companionship in the field. Of particular note here, though, are Aedeen Cremin, Penny Crook, and Phillippa Weaver. We are also grateful to the Kinchega National Park for providing accommodation for the project team during this fieldwork and to park staff for their support, especially Rick Taylor and Badger Bates. In 2000, I carried out initial archival research into the Kinchega Pastoral Estate bookkeeping records, held at Kars Station, with support from the Charles Rasp Library, Broken Hill. I am grateful to John (Tom) Hughes, Kars Station, for providing access to these records, and also to Brian Tonkin and Marvis Sofield, library manager, for their assistance with this research.

For further library and archival research for the historical context of the Old Kinchega Homestead, I am grateful to the National Library of Australia, Canberra, for a Harold White Fellowship (September to December 2014). KARP is essentially an archaeological project but this fellowship at the National Library of Australia, while I was resident in the United Kingdom, provided access to the Library’s extensive collections of both published works on histories of Australian pastoralism and of western NSW, their collection of Australian mail order catalogues, their digitised collections of Australian newspapers, and to their own archival collections and audio recordings of outback pastoral life and Darling River transport, as well as to those in the Menzies Library, Australian National University. During this fellowship, I was again grateful to Aedeen Cremin, who gave generously of her time to assist with this library research. For their important contributions of oral information, drawings and photographs that have been used in this study, I would like to thank former occupants and their descendants, and members of the Hughes family, especially Tom Hughes, Chris Hughes, Fred and Pippa Hughes, Peter Beven, Robin Taylor, Jim McLennan and Noeline (Sissy) Clarke. I would like to thank David Dumaresq, who has provided insights into his own family’s pastoral history. This study would not be complete without their valuable contributions. Regrettably, some former occupants of OKH and members of the Hughes family who provided valuable information at the beginning of this project are no longer with us to witness the final outcome of this research and their own input into it.

This monograph focuses on fine ceramics and their roles in social behaviour at the Old Kinchega Homestead, and particularly the remains of tablewares and teawares that were collected in and around the homestead by KARP between 1998 and 2002. Most of the post-excavation recording, photographing and analyses of these ceramic remains was undertaken in the School of Archaeology 1 A fuller report of KARP is currently being prepared for publication by University of Sydney Press, in association with the Australasian Society for Historical Archaeology.

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Foreword and Acknowledgements to the University of Leicester for support and funding to bring this monograph to completion, especially to Graham Shipley, editor of the Leicester Archaeology Monographs, for his invaluable assistance with the index.

Other contributors to this project’s fieldwork to whom I am indebted include: Jaimie Lovell, who was responsible for the original design of the databases used to record the features contexts and artefacts; Lara Band, who collated the information on the Kinchega stores journals; and Sarah Colley, who, with funding from the College of Arts and Social Sciences (University of Leicester) has helped to digitally collate all the data resources resulting from KARP, making working with these data sets and images of the ceramics a much simpler task. I am also grateful to many of the Roman ceramic specialists who took part in the Big Data on the Roman Table Network (see Allison et al. 2018), and to my PhD student, Alessandra Pegurri, for the insights they have given me for more consumptionoriented approaches to ceramic classification and analyses.

Last but not least, I am indebted to my co-author, Virginia Esposito, for her expert knowledge of Australian nineteenth-century ceramics, for giving freely of her time to this project, for her attention to detail, and for her contributions to our combined analyses in the chapters that comprise the bulk of the analyses in this monograph – chapters four to eight. Any errors or lacunae are our own and hopefully can be addressed, and the approaches used in this study improved on, with more research in this area. The Kinchega National Park celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2017. It is to be regretted that this monograph was not completed for this celebration. However, the archaeology and history of Kinchega, in all its dimensions, continues to be a fascinating topic.

I would like to thank Chris Hughes again for reading and commenting on chapter nine. For producing the drawings that have been used in this monograph, I am grateful to Amanda Mottram, Deborah Miles Williams and Mike Hawkes, and also to Peter Beven for his important sketch of the homestead, which he executed from memory. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their very insightful comments and suggestions. And, I am grateful

Penelope Allison Director of the Kinchega Archaeological Research Project University of Leicester 2019

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1 Introduction: Micro-archaeological Approaches and the Old Kinchega Homestead P. Allison The Old Kinchega Homestead and the west Darling region

Objects both inform on household practices and are active agents in the performativity of social interactions in domestic contexts, purveying socio-cultural messages among participants in such interactions. Detailed analyses of mundane domestic artefacts and their contextual and social assemblages can therefore provide nuanced, and also more holistic, understandings of social worlds. This includes those of the largely British migrants and their descendants who made their home in colonial outback Australia, as part of Australia’s important pastoral industry. An artefact-based approach to social practices at one pastoral homestead2 in a relatively remote late nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century British colonial and post-colonial context in outback Australia can be used to investigate changing social values, changing meanings of domestic artefacts, and changing Britishness and associated concepts of gentility and respectability and codes of hospitality in this setting.

Old Kinchega Homestead (OKH) was one of the main residences on the Kinchega Pastoral Estate, in western NSW. This region, west of the Darling River and bounded by that river and by the Queensland and South Australian borders, is often referred to as ‘The Corner Country’ (Figure 1). Its first official exploration by Europeans was in 1835 (Mitchell 1839), resulting in the area being ‘squatted’ for pastoral pursuits from c.1846. Initially ‘squatting’ in this region was in ‘defiance of the government’ (see Waterhouse 2005: 14, 21–22). However, the region became increasingly more settled, and colonised, by Europeans during the second half of the nineteenth century, first for further extensive pastoral runs (see Hardy 1969: 61–117) and then, after 1880, for mining exploits, mainly in the Barrier Ranges and the White Cliffs areas (see Hardy 1969: 151–99).

This study focuses on the artefactual evidence for eating and drinking practices at the Old Kinchega Homestead, an outback pastoral homestead in western New South Wales, Australia, occupied from at least 1878 until 1955. It comprises micro-archaeological analyses of ceramic tableware and teaware remains recovered from the homestead site by the Kinchega Archaeological Research Project and uses these analyses to drive investigations of related documentary records of comparable items in Australian mail order catalogues, and of purchasing entries in the Kinchega Pastoral Estate’s bookkeeping records of potentially some of the same objects. It also analyses relevant reports in local newspapers and information provided by former homestead inhabitants and their descendants. These combined analyses provide insights into the homestead’s occupants’ social networks, socio-cultural mores and social aspirations. In turn, these insights can lead to greater understandings of the social lives and lived experiences of people, particularly ‘white’ women, involved in Australia’s outback pastoral industry, aspects of this industry that have received little attention in the traditional histories and archaeological research on this male-dominated sphere. Here this study takes both a detailed socially oriented approach to artefactual evidence in archaeology, and a more artefact-based approach to social history, as well as a more integrated approach in both (see Russell 2016: 50).

2

The area of Darling River and Menindee Lakes in which OKH is located was an important resource for the Aboriginal populations from some 27,000 years ago (Balme and Hope 1990; Balme 1995; Martin et al. n.d.: 46; see also Rainbird et al. n.d.: 5–12). This area was still important for relatively large Aboriginal communities when first explored by Europeans and then occupied by pastoralists. However, documentary and oral evidence, and also likely archaeological evidence, demonstrating its continuing occupation by Aboriginal communities as pastoralists settled here is limited (see Hardy 1969: 37–38; Martin et al. n.d.: 8; Rainbird et al. n.d.: 46–54; Pardoe 2003; see also Freeman 2002: esp. 14–19, 48–63). The first documented evidence for pastoral activity in the Menindee Lakes area is that of a sheep camp called ‘Kinchega Station’, recorded in 1851 (see Survey of Right Bank of Darling River, 1851). This station was owned by the Rankin family (Hardy 1969: 65), who had taken up three other pastoral leases in the area in 1849 (Haeusler 1989: 14–15). A year or so later, a hotel was reportedly erected to form the embryonic beginnings of what later became the first township on the Darling River, Menindee, about 15 km to the north of the site of OKH (see Hardy 1969: 82–83; Maiden 1989: 4). In 1860, the famous Australian explorers Robert O’Hara Burke and John William Wills camped at Peter MacGregor’s Kinchega river steamer landing prior to their fatal attempt to cross central Australia (Hardy 1969: 122–28; Maiden 1989: 34; Bonyhardy 1991: 113–15, 120–23, passim Kearns 1970: 3).

A ‘homestead’ in Australia is the residential complex of a pastoral station.

1

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 1. Map of western NSW showing location of the Old Kinchega Homestead. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes for KARP.)

in the Darling River), and on the red soils that had not been subjected to flooding. The core of OKH appears to have been completed by 1878 (Figure 3), and comprised a four-roomed main homestead building with at least two outbuildings. As indicated in the plan drawn in 1996 by a former occupant of the homestead, Peter Beven (Figure 2), the main building was added to and adapted during its lifetime. The homestead area also included several other service buildings and workers’ residences, two of which are indicated on Beven’s plan – a ‘Chinaman’s hut’ and a ‘slab hut’ (for plan of homestead complex: Figure 4; for further details: Allison 2014, n.d. 1). In 1955, OKH was replaced by a smaller homestead, the New Kinchega Homestead, built c.3 km to the south near the woolshed, and so closer to the workers on the station (see Allison 2003; 2014). The Old and then the New Kinchega Homesteads were occupied first by the managers and then, after 1915, by overseers of Kinchega Station, as part of the Kinchega Pastoral Estate. The occupants of these homestead complexes were predominantly British, but included people of other European, Chinese and Aboriginal origin. While the estate owner, H. B. Hughes, lived in Adelaide, at least one of his sons lived at OKH as manager (see Appendix 10), and members of the Hughes family were apparently frequent visitors to OKH. The homestead was partially demolished in the 1960s–70s, after the establishment of the Kinchega National Park and prior to the 1977 New South Wales Heritage Act (Heritage Act 1997 2018).

In 1870, after a number of short leaseholdings, the Kinchega pastoral lease was taken up by Herbert Bristow Hughes, who developed the Kinchega Pastoral Estate, which at one time reportedly stretched from the Darling River to beyond the Barrier Ranges, and, by 1882, ran up to 160,000 sheep (Kearns 1970: 4, 9). Parts of the Kinchega Pastoral Estate still remain in H. B. Hughes’ name and in the Hughes family. However, when the lease was due to expire in 1967, the eastern end of the estate, including OKH and Darling River frontage, was converted into the Kinchega National Park (Canberra Times, 7 Dec. 1966: 12). OKH, on Kinchega Station, was one of a number of homesteads on the Kinchega Pastoral Estate and, being on the banks of the Darling River, was less remote than many other homesteads and pastoral stations in this west Darling region. There was undoubtedly an earlier Kinchega homestead than OKH, built closer to the bend in the Darling River, which was reported by H. B. Hughes’ grandson, E. Gwynne Hughes (pers. comm., fax, 14 Oct. 1998; see also Figure 2) and of which fragments of brick and household artefacts have been recorded (Homestead no. 1 site: Freeman 2002[2]: 23–28). This earlier homestead, built on the grey soils of the Darling River’s flood plain, may have been visited by Bourke and Wills and had very probably been subsequently flooded. A newer homestead (OKH) was built to the north, on the edge of the billabong (the large pond formed from an earlier bend 2

Introduction: Micro-archaeological Approaches and the Old Kinchega Homestead Under the Hughes’ long leasehold, and during the period in which OKH was occupied, the Kinchega Pastoral Estate became a significant player in the wool industry that was a major contributor to Australia’s economic growth in the late nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century. During this period, the estate experienced fluctuating fortunes. Contributing factors to these fortunes were: depression and rabbit infestations in the 1880s; droughts, overstocking and more rabbits during the first few decades of the twentieth century (Hardy 1969: 189–190, 228–231); the ‘boom and bust’ of the Australian economy into the mid-twentieth century; and changing transport and communication systems from stock routes, bullock wagons, stagecoaches and river steamers to trains, telephones, motorised transport and the radio (see Schmidt n.d.: 121–132; Meredith and Dyster 1999: esp. 58–68, 100–102, 123, 136–38; Waterhouse 2005: esp. 35–38, 90, 179, 219–20). The period in which OKH was occupied was also a period of considerable social change in Australia: from colonial settlement; through phases of reportedly ‘transnational Anglo-Saxonism’ in the late nineteenth century and first decade of the twentieth century (Lake 2013); Australian Federation in 1901 (Cremin 2001), when Australians were forging their own national identity; then a revivified ‘White Britishness’ prior to and during the First World War; and finally to the early 1950s, after the Australian Citizenship Act (1948) came into force.

Figure 2. Sketch plan of homestead by Peter Beven, annotated by E. Gwynne Hughes – ‘EGH’ (1998). (Courtesy of Peter Beven.)

Figure 3. Pencil and wash drawing of the Old Kinchega Homestead, dated 1878. (Photo courtesy of Chris Hughes.)

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Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? The Kinchega Archaeological Research Project

from OKH (Allison and Cremin 2006) demonstrated that these particular objects offer the greatest potential for important insights into social behaviour at this site, and in this particular socio-cultural context. Thus, within KARP’s concern with household activities and consumption practices, the current study focuses specifically on the tableware and teaware remains recorded by KARP and the insights they provide into the changing social practices associated with eating and drinking at this homestead, and the significance of these changing practices in this context, as part of the wider ‘British world’.

The over 2,000 ceramic tableware and teaware fragments discussed in this study were collected from OKH and recorded by the Kinchega Archaeological Research Project (KARP). Between 1996 and 2010, KARP carried out archaeological, archival and oral history investigations of OKH and its occupants (Allison n.d.1.). The first two field seasons (1996 and 1998) involved survey of extant pre-European and European surface features associated with the homestead complex and in the immediate vicinity (Rainbird et al. n.d.; Allison 1998; Figure 4). In 1999 and 2000 (Allison n.d. 2, n.d. 3), small-scale excavations were carried out, using metre-wide trenches through the residential buildings of the homestead – the main building (Building A – Allison 2003: fig. 6; 2014: fig. 9), the ‘slab hut’ (Building R), and the ‘Chinaman’s hut’ (Building Y – Allison 2014: fig. 8). The aim of these excavations was to identify the various spaces within these buildings and to recover household artefacts, mainly from under the floors, to investigate the spatial distribution of household activities and consumption practices at the homestead. In 1999, two 1 m x 1 m test trenches were also excavated in the household refuse area (DD), which lies c.200 m to north of the main homestead building (A) and covers an area of some 500 sq. m. No artefacts were found below the surface in these two test trenches in this refuse area. Therefore, a further fieldwork programme, in 2002, focused on surface collection of artefacts that had been discarded at this refuse site, an area which was, and still is, being seriously looted by visitors to the Kinchega National Park (Allison and Cremin n.d.). This refuse area is dotted with artefact deposits, each of which appears to comprise a discrete dumping event with a relatively closely dated assemblage (Figure 5). In the first stage of this surface collection, total artefact assemblages were collected from six 4  m x 4  m sample squares within selected larger deposits in this refuse area. However, for more targeted sampling for information on household activities, samples of different types of glassware and diagnostic ceramic fragments were collected across the entire refuse area, with each dumping event identified as a separate context (see Allison 2003: 175; Allison and Cremin 2006: 49).

Household consumption and social practices The anthropologist David Graedler critiqued consumption studies for their lack of acknowledgement of social production and maintenance (2011: 489–511). Mullins similarly argued that, while archaeology has long acknowledged consumption patterns as the logical outcome of production, it has paid little attention to the significance of socialising processes surrounding the purchasing and use of goods (2011: 113–44; cf. Baugher and Venables 1987: 36–38). Over recent decades, and across the archaeologies of historical periods, there has been increasing attention to domestic sites as sites of household consumption, the analyses of which have been concerned with investigating actual social practices for greater understanding of consumption and social status (e.g. Beaudry 2004: 254; King 2009; Casella 2009; Owens and Jeffries 2016). As argued by Lauren Prossor, Susan Lawrence, Alasdair Brooks and Jane Lennon, ‘researchers are again explicitly addressing the methodological and theoretical challenges offered by studies of activity and social interaction at the household level’, and are investigating ‘longitudinal change in households’ through ‘micro-scale analyses’ (2012: 810). In Australian historical archaeology there has been much investigation of household material culture and social practice in urban environments (e.g. Karskens 1999; Crook 2000, 2005; Casey 2005; see also Lawrence and Davies 2018). Archaeological studies that have investigated domestic consumption and household socio-economic status in more rural regions have been mainly concerned with more settled ‘country’ or semi-urban regions close to Australia’s main cities and distribution centres (e.g. Connah 2007; Hayes 2007, 2011, 2014a, 2014b; Prossor et al. 2012), or mining communities in ‘the bush’ (e.g. Lawrence 2000). Comparable investigations of colonial and post-colonial outback Australia are notably absent. However, the experiences of colonial settlers and their successors in such more remote contexts would have been quite different from those in more settled areas. For outback Australia, transport and communications systems, both for the acquisition of household goods and opportunities for social networking, provided more of a challenge. The ‘embeddedness in landscapes [which] must have underpinned many [household] practices and relationships’ (Foxhall 2016: 326) is particularly true for this context.

KARP’s overall research programme combines analyses of all the archaeological evidence from this fieldwork at OKH with oral and archival research, to investigate the materiality of the lived experiences of the homestead occupants. The artefactual remains at OKH and the original bookkeeping records of the Kinchega Pastoral Estate, in particular, constitute primary source materials for insights into these experiences throughout the homestead’s history, and into the connections of these experiences to the changing purchasing and consumption practices for household goods over its 80-year occupancy. These analyses raised questions concerning the role of these artefacts in understanding the impact of changing communication networks, economic circumstances and social mores on household behaviour in this context. Preliminary analyses of the ceramic artefacts collected 4

Introduction: Micro-archaeological Approaches and the Old Kinchega Homestead

Figure 4. North-east and central part of area surveyed by KARP. A = Building A (main building), B = Building B (kitchen), C = Building C (store and men’s quarters), R = Building R (‘slab hut’), Y = Building Y (‘Chinaman’s hut’), DD = Dump DD. (Survey by Michael Barry for KARP, redrawn by Michael Hawkes.)

5

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 5. Area of rubbish dump (DD) at the Old Kinchega Homestead, indicating discrete dumping events that were identified as individual contexts. (Survey drawing by Matthew Levesley, redrawn by Michael Hawkes.)

Also, in Australian historical archaeology, many studies of household consumption and social practices concern early to mid-nineteenth-century colonial households. For most of Australia’s earlier colonial history, outback regions lacked any European colonisation. As noted above, such areas were not settled until after the mid-nineteenth century, when ‘squatters’ were searching for what they believed would be suitable land for rearing mainly sheep,

but also cattle. For regions like the west Darling, the difficulties with transport and communication that played significant roles, first in the nature of their settlement and then in the nature of market access, continued into the twentieth century. These continuing difficult conditions meant that associated household consumption and social practices also continued to be different from more urban and semi-rural households. However, histories of 6

Introduction: Micro-archaeological Approaches and the Old Kinchega Homestead European settlement in such remote areas have focused on economic histories of Australia’s sheep- and cattlerearing pastoral industry rather than on these household conditions. As well as ignoring, until recently (e.g. Paterson et al. 2003; Harrison 2004; Paterson 2011), the important roles of Aboriginal people in this industry and its significant impact on their changed lives, these mainly ‘white male’ histories have also essentially ignored the domestic and social spheres associated with this industry, and thereby the ‘white’ women and children who were involved (see Paterson 2005, 2008: 8; 2011). The personal diaries and reports of some pastoralists’ wives provide insights into the domestic and social conditions associated with the pastoral industry. However, in-depth analyses of the mundane material traces of the domestic lives of these men and women can bring greater understandings of their lived experiences in this environment – an environment which generally proved to be less familiar and more hostile than originally perceived, or hoped for.

production, distribution and consumption, and of social practice, with ‘international flows and connections’ (Berg 2013: 1), during a period in which the political, economic and social landscapes of many different parts of the British Empire were changing and moving towards political and intellectual, if not necessarily economic and socio-cultural, independence. As outlined above, this study investigates food and drink consumption and associated social practices at OKH through evidence for tablewares and teawares. The micro-archaeological analyses of the artefactual and documentary evidence for the purchasing and use of tablewares and teawares at OKH provide insights into the relationships of changing market access and social mores to changes in the opportunities for the enactments of social interaction and in the meanings of these types of objects. Pavao-Zuckerman, Anderson and Reeves argue that ‘[f]ood practices are … structured by local ecology and the economic status of individuals and households. The ability to distinguish oneself at the dinner table is … a key [aspect] of perceived socioeconomic status’ (2018: 373). This not only applies to what people eat and drink, but also the ways in which they do this, and the strategies they develop, in often hostile landscapes, to demonstrate their social standing and social aspirations.

Given the late colonisation of such regions and their continued relative isolation, this study embraces a rather later period than is common in historical archaeology. With the focus of most archaeological research on earlier colonial years, in Australia and other colonial contexts, few studies have been able to trace household consumption and social practices into the mid-twentieth century. While some historical archaeological studies in Australia have included domestic sites occupied during the twentieth century (e.g. Nayton 2011; Brown 2012; Prossor et al. 2012), they have tended not to focus on the household practices of this twentieth-century occupation. A lack of attention in archaeology to household material culture in the more recent past is also a more widespread phenomenon (see Symonds 2004: 33–48). Although contemporary archaeology is a growing research area (see e.g. Myers 2016; Caraher et al. 2017), as Rodney Harrison has emphasised (2016), much use of the recent past in archaeology has been for its analogical implications for archaeological investigations of more distant pasts (e.g. Mullins 2017). This is particularly true for ceramics and their classification for Australian historical archaeology (cf. Brooks 2005; Nayton 2011: 243–46). For Australia, archaeological studies which are able to investigate longitudinal change in households and that also traverse important transitional periods in Australia’s colonial and post-colonial history are limited in number. This study of an outback homestead occupied from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century embraces some of these transitional periods when a developing, and seemingly fluctuating, sense of nationhood was making major changes to the concept of Britishness and its associated social mores (see Cremin 2001), and when rapidly developing communication systems were changing lived experiences across the ‘Angloworld’ (see Belich 2005; Lake 2013).

Material culture, new materialism and social agency This study investigates the active roles that material remains of household consumption practices, and their assessed values, play in social behaviour, and also the roles these objects play in informing on social values. As argued by Suzanne Harris, the value of artefacts is based on the desire for them, a desire that, in turn, is based on a variety of factors often involving ‘complex biographies of production, distribution and accumulation’ (2017: 694). Fundamental to this study of relationships between artefacts and social practice is, therefore, the examination of the ‘consumption of objects within the frameworks of identity and social agency’ (see also Spencer-Wood 2019: 266–67). In Australian historical archaeology, there have also been attempts to tie the price, quality and value of artefacts to such consumption practices, particularly for tablewares (see Brooks 2005: 61–62; Crook 2008). As argued by Clare Burke and Suzanne Spencer-Wood (2019: 1), ‘over the past 30 years there has been an epistemological shift towards considering the importance of human cognition and choice in the creation and use of material objects, and [in] the embedded social nature of the relationship between people and material’. Over 30 years ago, Arjun Appadurai had proposed that commodities ‘like people have social lives’ (1986: 3). He argued that the important conceptual features of the ‘commodity candidacy of things’ are ‘the standards and criteria (symbolic, classificatory, moral) that define the exchangeability of things in any particular social or historical contexts’ (Appadurai 1986: 14). At the same time, Igor Kopytoff (1986) argued that modern Western thought

Despite its relative remoteness and particular landscape and its specific Australian context, OKH and its consumption practices were part of a global network. Its household practices are part of a global history of material-culture 7

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? has conceptually polarised individualised and singularised people from commoditised ‘things’, and stressed the need for a biographical approach to both people and things. Things, according to Appadurai (1986: 5), ‘are the stuff of “material culture” which unites archaeologists with several kinds of cultural anthropologists’. The latter, cultural anthropologists, have recently argued that ‘things render tangible or actualise in a performative way important aspects of social organisation, culture, systems of thought, or actions’ (Lemonnier 2012: 14) and can communicate encoded meaning. Fernando Domínguez Rubio further stresses (2016: 59) that we need to ‘think about the material world not in terms of “objects”, but ecologically … in terms of the processes and conditions under which certain “things” come to be differentiated and identified as particular kinds of “objects” endowed with particular forms of meaning, value and power’. This applies to ‘the everyday, practical interactions between people and things’ where things are not purely markers of social standing but themselves have agency (Clarke 2014: 20).

their emotional, culturally determined relationships with, and use of, the objects with which they were surrounded (see e.g. Tarlow 2012; Creese 2016). This study of the OKH tablewares and teawares demonstrates that things have ‘social agency’ (Burke and Spencer-Wood 2019: 8). It also demonstrates that the people using seemingly mundane domestic objects have a culturally rooted relationship with them through which they evoke emotion and memory as well as signify social status, but a relationship that changes over the period in which this homestead was occupied. Global history, social history, microhistory and microarchaeology A further feature of this study, in its investigation of ‘things’ that are small and seemingly insignificant household items, is that these things are minutely analysed and the differences among them used for insights into changing local practices and the changing meaning of things, and the relationships of these changes to global systems.

Historians, too, have stressed the importance of ‘new materialism’ and ‘new materialist history’ that acknowledges the active roles of material culture and also the natural world in shaping people. Hans Schouwenburg highlights the particular significance of this ‘material turn’ in our understanding of people who ‘have escaped the written record’ (2015: 69). The people who occupied OKH are not the types of people who are well recorded in traditional histories. Their tablewares and teawares provide the best expressions of their social behaviour and their maintenance of social values in this specific environmental and industrial context.

Maxine Berg highlighted the importance of materialculture analyses in ‘global comparison and connections’ in economic history (2013: 5–6) and stressed the need for global historians ‘to work with the theories, findings and techniques’ of archaeologists (2013: 13). Here Berg’s concern for the concepts of ‘connectedness and entanglement’ in the ‘transmission of material cultures’ and the connection of ‘household behaviour with macroeconomic labour and capital markets’ for economic histories of colonial empires (2013: 10, 11) resonates with archaeologists’ concepts of the entanglement of people and things, and their meanings. Indeed, in the current climate of what might be termed ‘post-global’ politics and economics, and with Hamilakis’ call for a ‘decolonial archaeology’ (2018), Berg’s concerns are as pertinent, if not more so, for a global social history.

In recent years, archaeologists have likewise argued for the importance of the holistic approach of ‘new materialism’ in radically changing archaeologists’ approaches to investigating the residues of material conditions of past human behaviour (Barrett 2016: 133–34). In particular, they have emphasised a ‘turn to ontology’ and a need for an assessment of a ‘symmetrical … relationships between humans and things’ in terms of ‘entanglement and entrapment’ (see Hodder and Lucas 2017; see also Nativ 2018a: 7–8). As Ian Hodder and Gavin Lucas argue, while ‘humans make things and things made by humans make people’, the symmetrical relationship is broken down and becomes asymmetrical because the care that people often have for things is not reciprocated (2017: 136). People have emotional attachments to things, but not vice versa. Jane Lydon and Tracey Ireland (2005: 4) highlighted the ‘contrast between commoditisation and singularisation’ and the role of the past material world in sustaining ‘one’s sense of place and cultural identity’ in the current world, where objects, as well as places, ‘contribute to a sensory and emotional perception of belonging (2005: 1). However, Lydon and Ireland argue that the ‘very stillness of things masks [their] fluid shifts in meaning’ (2005: 11). While Lydon and Ireland were referring to our own attachments to material heritage, their perspective also applies to people in the past – their perceptions of their material world and

Berg’s arguments for ‘microhistory’ for economic history and for ‘smallness as a way of connecting to the large’ reiterate Sigurður Magnússon’s call for a microhistory ‘as the most effective reaction from within the field of history to the dilemma facing social history’ by reducing ‘the scale of observation’, ‘reveal[ing] the complicated function of individual relationships within each and every social setting’ and stressing ‘its difference from larger norm’ (2003: 709). At the same time, though, Magnússon argued that ‘no reconstruction of past time can be carried out without the assistance of metanarratives’ (2003: 716). He called for ‘the singularization of history’ as an inwardlooking method that ‘turn[s] scholars’ attention onto the precise features of the events or phenomena they are dealing with’ and brings out their nuances, but without avoiding metanarratives (Magnússon 2003: 723). Kristján Mímisson (2014) investigated how the singularisation of history might be applicable to archaeology. As outlined above, Kopytoff had critiqued a 8

Introduction: Micro-archaeological Approaches and the Old Kinchega Homestead ‘singularised’ approach to people but the ‘commoditisation’ of ‘things’. Mímisson argued for the ‘epistemological strength of things small and ordinary’ which are often ‘smoothed over by grand and generalized narratives’ or ‘not thought to contribute to the grand narratives’ (2014: 132). Mímisson is concerned with the ‘ontological [condition] and strength of material culture and its narrative properties’ and with ‘scrutinizing the details of each event and object of research, looking for meaning within them rather than in larger contexts’ (2014: 131, 133). He has called for a ‘singularized archaeology’ that also ‘looks inward regarding the things at hand by honouring their nature as singularities, their intimate relations and ontological constitution’ and ‘how they reassemble into composite entities like practices, events or persons’ (2014: 139). Charles Orser (2016) has stressed the particular relationship between microhistory and historical archaeology and the ideology of singularisation that can include metanarrative rather than macrohistory. He sees one of historical archaeology’s ‘primary tasks … even within singularization, as understanding the social networks that operated within specific past historical contexts’, and argued that these social networks ‘exist on vertical [chronological] as well as horizontal planes’ (Orser 2016: 180).

As argued by Antonio Blanco-Gonzalez, ‘the limits of knowledge are not inherent in the material record itself but lie in the mode of inquiry’ (2017: 1104). Crook (2005: 16) noted the importance of an interpretative consumption approach from the outset of any artefact analyses (see also Crook 2008: 35). The artefacts collected by KARP were recorded and collated, from the outset, using an interpretative consumption approach to their identification and a micro-archaeological approach to their classification for investigating social production and maintenance (see Allison 2003: esp. 180–88). In this study, a selection of these artefacts – namely ceramic tableware and teaware remains – and the nuances of the various and particular social practices in which they played a part are analysed. This ‘bottom’ approach (Mímisson 2014: 150) crafts, in new and potentially subversive ways, material histories of individuals and groups whose social activities are not generally considered part of the macrohistories of British colonial and post-colonial histories. At the same time, it considers ‘dialectics of scale’ for these interactions, and their relationships to both local and global systems (Orser 2009). The ‘microhistories’ of these artefacts are used to provide fresh perspectives on social practices in this remote region of the British colonial and post-colonial world, and on how and why these practices changed over this important period in Australia’s history. Thus, this artefact-based approach gives greater insights into social behaviour associated with one of Australia’s globally significant industries – the wool industry. As Lin Foxhall noted, ‘the entanglement of material objects with the habitus of human life has also a spatial dimension’ and ‘[b] eyond the institutions of polities and states, the agency of households in devising their own ways of habituating space, whatever the parameters, has largely been overlooked’ (2016: 326–27). Orser further commented that spatial analytical frameworks in singularisation ‘are situationally determined rather than pre-determined’ (2016: 178). This study demonstrates how the physical landscape, the socio-cultural context, and the industrial setting all played significant roles in the enactment of social behaviour at this homestead.

This current study’s singularised, micro-archaeological approach to artefactual remains assesses the precise factors that characterise the assemblages of objects at OKH, horizontally and vertically. These factors then serve in the construction of the social identities of these things and in tracing changing social practices and social networks of the people who used them. It focuses specifically on ceramic artefacts and their active roles in the social activities of dining and tea-drinking at this homestead. In the British world, in particular, such social activities were important signifiers of the social mores and social hierarchies associated with Victorian ideologies of ‘gentility’ and ‘respectability’, and in Australia with codes of hospitality, defined and discussed in chapter two. The materials used in such social activities formed part of the social ‘performance’ of these ideologies and codes (see Russell 1994: 1–91; Goodwin 1999: 40), and were important actors in their maintenance (see e.g. Roth 1961; Emmerson 1992: 1–27; for further references: Gray 2013). Linda Young (2003: 153–88) and Penny Crook (2008: 233) have emphasised the importance that the acquisition of, and investment in, such material goods played in establishing a ‘genteel British’ household in colonial Australia. Through the microhistories of the OKH tableware and teaware remains, their micro-archaeological contexts, and attitudes to ‘Britishness’, ‘gentility’, ‘respectability’ and hospitality in Australian colonial and post-colonial society, this study investigates how the occupants of OKH coped with British colonial, and also with more specifically Australian, social mores in this outback context. It explores the maintenance of these codes of social behaviour, the development of social worlds in this largely male domain, and the place of ‘white’ women in this regard.

Monograph outline The following two chapters, by Allison, provide a socialhistorical context for OKH, its occupants and their household material culture. Firstly, chapter two discusses changing concepts of ‘Britishness’, and British and Australian social mores, some of which are conflicting. Here, it focuses in this regard on attitudes and social practices associated with food and drink consumption – especially tea-drinking and social performance, and associated mythologies of the outback. It also outlines any concern, to date, for the material culture associated with these social practices. Chapter three commences with a brief description of the transport and communication systems in the west Darling region that impacted on the supply of goods to this region, during the period when OKH was occupied, and on the 9

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? lives of the people who occupied this pastoral homestead. It then analyses documentary reports of social practice in comparable outback settings, notably the diaries and letters of pastoralists’ wives. It focuses on the evidence these written sources provide on the singularised outback experiences of and opportunities for social interaction for these particular women, and on their enactment of social mores. These written sources also provide glimpses of the types of material culture associated with food and drink consumption that were available to these women for any such social interactions, and of the values that they placed on these ‘things’. These women’s experiences – the differences and the common threads – provide references in the investigation of such social interactions over the period during which OKH was occupied.

of documentary and artefactual evidence, and its quality, has allowed microhistorical quantitative and qualitative analyses of this material and the investigation of these practices, and the roles played by market access, consumer awareness and social mores in such practices over the 80 years of this homestead’s occupancy. Chapter eight, also by Allison and Esposito, uses the analyses in chapters five and six to compare the quantity and quality of tableware and teaware sets among the OKH ceramics – the numbers, composition and types of sets – with those at other relatively contemporary sites. While chapter seven focuses on the purchasing of tablewares and teawares and the social significance of the post-1890 tablewares and teawares recorded at OKH, this chapter is mainly concerned with the contexts of end use of pre1890 OKH tablewares and teawares which are not well represented in the documentary evidence discussed in chapter seven. It analyses relatively comparable, published data sets of ceramic remains from other, largely nineteenth-century, urban and semi-urban archaeological sites in Australia, whose occupants ranged from those who might be considered working-class to upper middle-class households. It uses these analyses to assess the likely social practices and social standing of the occupants of OKH, as compared with those of the occupants of these sites with greater access to relevant markets and wider social circles. While other sites have not generally included the type of in-depth analyses that has been carried out for these OKH finewares, we have attempted to assess the extent to which similarities and differences in table settings among these sites and this outback homestead are related to comparative social status, and how these comparisons can be used to map social practices and social values in this more remote household.

Chapters four to seven, by Allison and Esposito, comprise in-depth analyses of over 2,000 ceramic fragments from some 800 tableware and teaware vessels recorded at OKH by KARP, and of related documentary sources (i.e. Australian mail order catalogues and the Kinchega Estate bookkeeping records). Chapter four describes the nature of the fineware ceramic assemblage collected from OKH. It discusses the approaches we have taken to dating these finewares, to identifying the various tableware and teaware vessel forms and their uses, and to identifying matching and complementary sets used for table settings for various types of meals at OKH. It also outlines how the likely cost, quality and value of these tablewares and teawares are used in interpreting the social significance of the various dining and tea-drinking sets identified in the following chapters. Chapters five and six comprise detailed, largely quantitative analyses of these tableware and teaware remains to identify sets, matching and complementary. Chapter five analyses the different tablewares to identify different table settings used during the life of OKH, and their changing quantities and composition – from a number of small, complex transfer-printed sets to fewer, larger, more amorphous and plainer sets. It discusses the likely social significance of the various types of sets and of chronological changes to their quality, composition and meaning. Chapter six analyses the different teawares recorded at OKH and identifies the various types and sizes of these tea sets, and also what these tell us about changing social practices and social mores at the homestead.

Chapter nine, by Allison, comprises analyses of specific documentary and oral records of not only the actual occupants of OKH but also their visitors, or likely visitors, to assess the types of people who may have ‘come to tea’ or dined with the homestead occupants during the various phases of the homestead’s occupancy. The documentary sources and the processes used to identify such people, especially visitors, are somewhat different from those used to identify occupants of urban dwellings (see Minchinton 2017; see also discussion in Owens and Jeffries 2016: 806– 807). In particular, Broken Hill and Adelaide newspapers sometimes reported the travels of the OKH occupants and visits by business associates, family members and other travellers to Kinchega. Also, former OKH occupants and their descendants have provided insights into some of the types of guests and the tea-drinking gatherings at OKH. Mullins argued (2014: 105), that such ‘oral memories [usually serve to] underscore [the] complex and ambiguous meanings [of things]’. Here the information from the analyses of the OKH tablewares and teawares and archival records is interrogated in relation to these reports of the OKH occupants and their descendants, to cut through some of these ambiguities, to reconstruct some of the types of social interactions that took place at the homestead, and

Chapter seven analyses entries in contemporary Australian mail order catalogues and in the Kinchega Pastoral Estate’s invoice books and stores journals, both dating from the 1890s until the 1940s and concerning the sale and purchase of tablewares and teawares. Other associated commodities listed in the estate bookkeeping records, notably tea and coffee, are also discussed. These records are analysed to investigate the purchasing procedures of the Kinchega Pastoral Estate, and to assess, more specifically, the relative cost, quality and likely social value of the various, mainly post-1890, tablewares and teawares recorded at OKH, and what more we might learn from these written records about associated social practices. This rare combination 10

Introduction: Micro-archaeological Approaches and the Old Kinchega Homestead to assess how these changed throughout its occupancy and the factors involved in these changes.

(Appendices 2–4); catalogues of the relevant entries from the Kinchega Estate bookkeeping records (Appendices 5–8); a table of comparative quantities of tablewares and teawares at other Australian sites (Appendix 9); and a table outlining the occupants of OKH (Appendix 10). Appendices 2–8 are available online.3

The concluding chapter, also by Allison, highlights the ways in which this study has used artefact-based analyses, and the microhistories of objects and their microarchaeological contexts, to gain insights into changing social practices, social values and social aspirations at this homestead and, in turn, how the homestead occupants used these objects to maintain and display social mores in this particular context. It discusses how the approaches taken in this study have wider implications for historical archaeology particularly, but also in other branches of archaeology, and the study’s limitation in this regard. It then discusses the contribution this micro-archaeological approach can make to Australian social history with more specific understandings of the enactment of social and gendered practices in the outback. Finally, it outlines ways in which this singular, local study may indeed provide new approaches, new information and new data for metanarratives but, at the same time, demonstrates the need to consider such localised conditions of colonialism and post-colonialism and the world of ‘the “manmade” ideological package of the metanarratives’ (Magnússon 2003: 721) in more global social histories.

Ann Stahl noted that, ‘our understanding of frontier processes is incomplete without a consideration of indigenous populations whose lands were taken and life ways transformed’ (2011: 94), and this applies to the area of OKH. The particular focus of this study and the nature of its evidence, however, mean it does not address questions concerning the impact of changing European settlement, communication systems and access to ever wider ranges of goods on the patterns of social life of Aboriginal communities associated with the pastoral industry here. This subject has been investigated in other parts of Australia, mainly at the community level, with investigations often driven by the documentary sources and focusing on economic perspectives rather than explicitly social ones (see Paterson 2005: esp. 42–44; 2008: esp. 163–83). While Lynette Russell (2016: esp. 51–52) has emphasised the significant role that material remains can play for better understandings of ‘the richness of cross-cultural contact’ in this realm (see also Paterson 2011), little material-cultural analysis has followed the microhistories of these life-ways transformations and their socio-cultural implications (although see Paterson 2011: 253–61).

This monograph includes 10 appendices which provide: a glossary for abbreviations and specialist terminology used in this study (Appendix 1); catalogues of the OKH tableware and teaware remains analysed in this study

These appendices are available to download from www.barpublishing. com/additional-downloads.html. Appendices 2–4 are sorted by catalogue number. The column ‘reg. no.’ will allow the reader to sort the entries by table number, as they appear in the text.

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2 Britishness, Gentility and Hospitality in Australian Society P. Allison Introduction

In her study of the rise of Britishness, Linda Colley argued that, for the British Isles, Britain was a cultural and political construct of the eighteenth century, and that ‘being British in the eighteenth century was primarily a case of not being French’ (1992: 5–6; quote from Lawrence 2003a: 4). While others have since argued that a concept of Britishness stems from the late sixteenth century and was associated with seventeenth-century colonialism in North America (see Johnson 2003: 21–22; Green 2003: 56), Colley argued that it was the war and empire in the eighteenth century that united England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland and ‘define[d] what Britishness was about’ (1992: 132). She argued that the ruling class of political and financial elites was created across these four nations through intermarriage of the landed aristocracy and that these elites, reinvigorating the power structure of the British Empire (Colley 1992: 156), created a political and social world of military prowess, education, manners and leisure pursuits through which they became the ‘arbiter[s] and guardian[s] of national culture’ (Colley 1992: 172). From the late eighteenth century, these elites needed also to convince a growing middle class of their right to rule, and so needed to maintain impeccable private as well as public lives. Consequently, the turn of the nineteenth century witnessed an ‘evolution of British manners’ and ‘a flurry of English publications [which] made the rules of “etiquette” – the rules that might ease the path of social advancement – both increasingly explicit and available to a broad middle-class readership’, in Britain and in its colonies (see Russell 2010: 114, 116). Related to this development was the development of ‘separate spheres’ ideologies, with women relegated to the affairs of the home and family. Colley argued (1992: 274) that, through this ideology, women of all social levels became the ‘guardians of morality’, linked to the moral character of the Empire (e.g. the anti-slavery campaigners).

The tableware and teaware artefacts analysed in this study comprise material signatures of socio-cultural practices and social mores at this Australian outback pastoral homestead. In many respects, these particular fineware ceramics can be seen as culturally British, irrespective of their place of manufacture, and serving as actors in social performance in this particular context. As such, they can provide insights into the ‘Britishness’ of the OKH occupants, and into their own concepts of manners, gentility, respectability and hospitality in what was a relatively remote corner of the British colonial and postcolonial worlds. The establishment of colonies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by European nations, and particularly the British, involved the translocation of large groups of people to environments that were often very unfamiliar to them. Into these new environments these people brought their social traditions, practices and mores, as a ‘cultural package’ (Lawrence 2003c: 22), in ways that often seemed incongruous in such environments, and also to their indigenous populations, but which helped these new arrivals to cope with anxieties associated with homesickness and fears about the future (see Pietsch 2013: 449). Part of the cultural packages required to maintain many of their traditional social practices and mores comprised material objects that needed to be transported by the migrants to their new homes. Indeed, considerable effort was often expended to transport such objects that might seem bizarre in terms of practical considerations. These objects in these cultural packages included equipment to ensure that eating and drinking were appropriately performed socio-cultural practices. In this chapter, some of the reasons behind these traditions and practices and their socio-cultural significance are outlined, and also some of the changes in Australian society over the generations in which OKH was occupied. There is a particular focus on the eating and drinking as activities of social ‘performance’, and the links of this performance with the development of, and the changes in, concepts of Britishness and gentility in Australian society (see Russell 1994: esp. 58–91).

Philip Buckner and R. Douglas Francis (2005: 13) emphasised Colley’s argument for the extension of Britishness and the multiple identities of the inhabitants of the British Isles, which is applicable to the further extension of Britishness to people in the dominions that made up the British Empire – Charles Dilke’s ‘Greater Britain’ (Dilke 2005). While identifying as an Australian, a Canadian, a New Zealander or a South African, these people invariably also identified as British. This multiidentity meant different things to different people within the British colonies (Lawrence 2003a; Beaudry 2003: 291). Ethnically, British identity could include those from different parts of the British Isles and the resulting Anglo-

The concept of Britishness The concept of Britishness has recently been a ‘fashionable topic in literary and cultural circles’ (Johnson 2003: 17) and debated by Australian historians (e.g. Meaney 2001, 2003; Lake 2013). 13

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Celtic settler societies in Canada, Australasia and South Africa (Lawrence 2003a: 4 and 7), but the cultural embrace of Britishness was much wider and included many other occupants of British colonies with other European or with indigenous ancestry.

and the maintenance of social standards, principally in the private, domestic world. The concept of ‘respectability’ was an extension of the ideology of ‘genteel’ conformity and refinement to the working classes (see Young 2003: 58–61) to which Victorian middle-class reformers felt they needed to aspire (see Bailey 1979: esp. 342; Lampard 2009: 50). The working classes also reformulated their own values to preserve ‘a distinct and irreducible class identity in its practice’, that was associated with ‘goodness’ and ‘moral rectitude’, and also the ‘economic countenance and selfsufficiency’ of skilled male workers in particular (Bailey 1979: 337–38). Thus, the middle-class concept of gentility, and the associated working-class concept of respectability, were essential parts of nineteenth-century Britishness. However, these terms were applied differently to men and women, and also carried with them sexism, racism, misogyny (see Johnson 2003: 20).

According to Buckner and Francis (2005: 13), this ‘British World’ was politically, intellectually and culturally British-dominated. The social and moral codes of Britishness were extended to all those within what James Belich referred to as an ‘Angloworld’. Within it, shared ‘language, assumptions, habits and tastes … created a kind of transnational social capital’ (Belich 2005: 48). The socio-cultural nature of Britishness in the dominions was constantly changing and being reformed, however. Belich, in an essentially demographic and economic approach to this ‘Angloworld’ during the period between 1784 and 1918, argued for the closeness between ‘old and new Britains’ that ‘transcended geographical distance’ (2005: 40). He stressed renewed ties, or ‘rehydration’, that improved transport and communication systems at the end of the nineteenth century meant for second- and third-generation British colonial settlers who could more easily move between Britain and their new homeland and develop greater social ties. This led to what he termed ‘a recolonial bridge’ and to a shared and renewed collective, ‘British’, identity (Belich 2005: 49). Buckner and Francis argued (2005: 13) that the phrase ‘British World’ was in use from the late nineteenth century to the 1950s, with the First World War strengthening ‘a sense of an imperial identity’ during which the Empire ‘could and did act as a unit’ (Buckner and Francis 2005: 17).

In British colonial society, white women were seen as the upholders of British social identity and moral values – the civilising forces and breeders of the Empire, responsible for the reproduction and rearing and educating children as ‘European’ (Knapman 1993: 127–31; original italics) – in situations where ‘British’ male behaviour might often be less closely scrutinised (see e.g. Russell 1994: 3). As noted above, the ideology of British gentility, and also respectability, required women, notably wives, to manage the domestic sphere (Young 2003: 25–26). Here they were responsible not only for moral values but also for the selection of household goods – from furniture to tableware – appropriate for the maintenance and display of gentility of the home (Young 2003: 72, 88–94; see also Spencer-Wood 2013: 184). However, Suzanne SpencerWood has argued (2016) that because of what she refers to as ‘patriarchal colonialism’ and particularly ‘patriarchal economic colonialism’, and a focus on higher-wageearning men, the gender and sexual power dynamics of the domestic sphere have received little attention in approaches to colonisation and colonialism in historical archaeology. More critically theorised approaches to how the ‘patriarchal power dynamics’ (Spencer-Wood 2016: 488) played out across the British world, and the resultant sexual and racial imbalances, are largely lacking. The institutionalised sexism of eighteenth- to twentiethcentury ‘patriarchal colonialism’, and of its investigation in historical archaeology, not only applies to encounters between colonial men and indigenous women and what Spencer-Wood terms ‘patriarchal domestic colonialism’ in which the colonisers taught indigenous women middleclass domestic roles (2016: 486). This can also apply to how British colonial men and women negotiated their new domestic environments, how gendered social practices would differ in different contexts, and how these relations are investigated through material evidence.

Susan Lawrence argued that the ‘moral values and cultural habits, language and tradition’ of Britishness meant that ‘individuals [were] socialised within particular cultural systems that shape[d] and [were] shaped by individual practice’ (2003a: 7). Particularly pertinent here is ‘the culture of gentility that surged at the turn of the nineteenth century’ (Young 2003: 4), as part of the shaping of practice associated with Britishness and its spread through the nineteenth century, from the elite to the middle classes and working classes, especially in the British dominions. While a sense of gentility can be traced back 500 years to the English court society, Linda Young argued that ‘Victorian gentility’ (2003: 5, 8, 15–19) can be dated from the late eighteenth century and into the first decades of the twentieth century (actually the 1780s to 1914), and was the aspirational culture of the British middle classes and an ideology about self-control over the body and emotions which depended on the aristocracy for inspiration and legitimacy. The major dimensions of this ideology were morality, respectability, cleanliness, politeness, deference to social ‘superiors’, avoidance of extreme emotional or verbal expressions, and codes and manners of refined behaviour according these dimensions. ‘Gentility’ did not depend on wealth, but included indulgence in cultured leisure activities, the attainment of which often required middleclass women to be removed from income-earning work so that they could carry out activities that displayed social duty

Britishness and social codes in Australia – manners, gentility and changing attitudes Mary Beaudry argued that ‘colonialism is best understood as a cultural process, not a cultural system’ (2003: 292), and 14

Britishness, Gentility and Hospitality in Australian Society was not necessarily a one-way process. Tamson Pietsch also argued that ‘historians of Britain and its empire need to think not of a singular British World but rather of multiple, produced British world spaces’ (2013: 447). Lawrence (2003a: 1) also stressed that ‘the British’ cannot be identified as a ‘single monolithic group’, at home or abroad. She argued that, while the British Empire fragmented during the twentieth century and, in Australia, a ‘new Australian identity was constructed’ during the Federation Project of 1901, for which Britishness was the ‘other’ (Lawrence 2003a: 6), Australians remained essentially British citizens until 1949 (Lawrence 2003a: 5–6). Neville Meaney has further argued that ‘Australian nationalist historiography based on the Bush and Anzac Legends and radical Labor mythology has distorted our understanding of Australian identity and that “British race patriotism” was dominant in Australia until the 1970s’ (2003: 121). According to James Jupp (2004: i, 1), Australia is still the ‘second most English country in the world’, with over one third of the population declaring themselves to be English in both the censuses of 1986 and 2001.

and the composition of Australian society were largely fluid, with supposed elites from diverse backgrounds, a system of manners and ‘etiquette’ evolved to provide these elites with a sense of stability and security in their position at the apex of this society (Russell 2010: 2–3). These elites, Russell argued (2002: 431), clung to ‘English manners [which] represented a last bastion of civilisation in a wilderness of social disintegration’, as seemingly ‘absurd remnants of a class-ridden “Old World”’ that did always not fit in well in this new colonial world (see Prossor et al. 2012: 818). Among those colonists who saw themselves as the elites, with often fairly dubious claims to ‘links to the highest pedigree of English society … [a] culture of gentility … flourished, as contesting groups vied to justify and legitimate their authority’ (Russell 2002: 435). Russell further argued that, ‘where a wealthy leisured class was lacking … [and] in a climate of uncertainty about who constituted the leaders of society, distinctions of manners assumed marked importance’ (Russell 2002: 435). So ‘[m] anners mattered … as a way of marking, and limiting, the social ascent of individuals’ in this society (Russell 2002: 436). ‘[S]ocial leadership was expressed through definitions of good taste and good manners’ (Russell 1994: 14). Such manners and Australian ‘etiquette’ were ‘unashamedly borrowed’ from nineteenth-century predominantly English literature (Russell 2002: 436; 2010: 119–20).

However, Marilyn Lake has more recently argued that the path of Britishness in Australia is less straightforward, and that in the late nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century a ‘transnational Anglo-Saxonism’ existed that was more inclusive than Meaney’s ‘British race patriotism’, where Australians also identified with Germany and the United States (2013: 36), and where the United States posed as a rival to the British for the loyalties of Australians. The First World War disrupted this ‘transnational AngloSaxonism’ and led to a ‘reinvigorated British imperialism’ in the following decades (Lake 2013: 38). According to Lake, ‘the Britishness nurtured in the 1920s and 1930s’ (2013: 43) had not always been present in Australia. These debates are focused on political and intellectual loyalties, however. The impact of oscillating Britishness on sociocultural practices and their regional specificity have been less extensively researched, particularly for the first half of the twentieth century.

Russell also argued, though, that ‘in colonial society the [social] “group” was constituted very differently from in Britain’ (2010: 121), not least because ‘[c]olonists left Britain in different decades and under different circumstances, from rural and urban communities, [and] from different grades of society’ (2010: 127). Most of those who classified themselves as the elite ruling class in Australian ‘Society’ might be better considered as middle class, if from the upper levels of a stratified middle class. These were not direct transplants from middle-class Britain, however, but a rising middle class that ultimately led and shaped these new colonial societies, in the absence of either aristocracy or indeed a defined working class (Young 2003: 10). The ‘complex system of etiquette’ was therefore developed to define standing in Australian society, and was ‘based on qualities far more subjectively determined than in Europe’ (Russell 1994: 61). This system had to deal with the social ramifications of situations such as that in which, for example, a successful politician from within ‘Society’ married a convict woman from without (see Russell 2010: 113; 128; see also Russell 2002: 442).

For nineteenth-century socio-cultural perspectives, Penny Russell argued that Australian ‘colonists took for granted that they were simply English people living in another place … [as] denizens of a fragmentary [British] metropolis rather than a colonial periphery’ (2010: 108). According to Russell, with the evident British ancestry and political and cultural allegiances of most Australians, Australian society mimicked the social structure of British society, although it did not totally reflect it. Australian society developed its own frames of reference for social structure and practice, especially Australian elite ‘Society’, in the largely urban context of mid-nineteenth century Melbourne (Russell 1994), who developed their own forms of eliteness and gentility (see also Russell 2002, 2010). Russell argued (2002: 431) that because the early colonial urban centres in Australia held a world of strangers of dubious origin, ever more elaborate and unstable social edifices were erected to deal with question of who was ‘in Society’. And, because the legal grounds on which white colonists claimed ownership of the lands of New Holland

In addition, given the changing nature of Australian society and continuous new arrivals, as in other colonial societies, ‘strategies of identity-making and self-affirmation [i.e. European and bourgeois] were unstable and in flux’ (Stoler 2000: 98), evolving through the later nineteenth century and spreading to different social ‘groups’. For example, Russell argued that ‘by 1880 the social composition of Melbourne’s bourgeoisie had changed considerably’ and the ‘standards of eligibility to [elite] Society had undergone considerable, and undesired [to the then gentry], modification’ (Russell 1994: 198). This also applied to other Australian colonies 15

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? and urban centres (Russell 2002). Retailers or ‘tradesmen’ who had become wealthy through extensive and successful businesses were a ‘new group bec[oming] dominant’ in Australian ‘Society’ and their wives were now gaining ‘privileged access, so long denied them’ (Russell 1994: 198). That is, people with little claim to the elite circle, in terms of breeding, gained access to it through their wealth and their standing in the community. This situation continued as the nineteenth century progressed. While etiquette writers lamented ‘the loss of elegance of an earlier age’ (Russell 2010: 267), ‘[l]arge sections of the working population adopted standards of morality important to their selfdefined respectability’ (Russell 1994: 175).

British. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, when Australians were reportedly becoming more ‘transnationally Anglo-Saxon’, they were also developing their own variants of English manners and associated social practices, with evolving ‘acts of hospitality, cordiality, and civility’ (Russell 2010: 3, 10; see also 2002: 438). Then, Russell argued (2010: 361), ‘[t]he turn of the [twentieth] century saw a new and very different self-consciousness about the nature of Australian manners. [Authors c] hoos[e] to associate egalitarian manners explicitly with a vernacular nationalism’. According to Russell, ‘[t]he Federation era’s celebration of the “Real Australian”’ ‘swept aside a century of more fractured and self-doubting colonial history. The story of colonial manners … at odds with the myth of egalitarianism … [was] deemed unAustralian’ (2010: 362). While concepts of Britishness were being challenged in the early years of the twentieth century and Australians had begun to assert their separate identity, as noted above, the pre-First World War and interwar years indeed saw a renewed British loyalty (Lake 2013: 36). In the meantime, associated manners and social codes did not dissolve. Rather, the socio-cultural signals were being modified and adapted.

As noted above, women played a crucial role, in both Britain and in her dominions, as ‘guardians of morality’ (see Colley 1992: 272–82), and of social behaviour. In the Australian colonies, women ‘bore the weight of responsibility for the moral virtue and social conduct that both preserved links with British culture and sustained and solidified class relations within colonial society’ (Russell 2002: 432, 449; see also Summers 1975). In early Australian colonial ‘Society’, ‘social status [was] determined by the extent to which [women] lived up to and appeared to control definitions of “genteel femininity”’, and, in ‘Society’, ‘women converted ideas of gentility into “genteel performance”’ (Russell 1994: 1–3). This ‘genteel performance’ (Russell 1994: esp. 58–91) – while essentially in the private sphere, with limited and controlled public engagement and often mocked by the women’s male relatives for its minutiae and rituals of etiquette – served to police social boundaries and frequently to secure the social acceptance of such males in the public sphere (see also Russell 2002: 448). Etiquette ‘literature [was] directed predominantly at female readership and began to define “virtue” as a domestic, female responsibility … separate from the social business of manners’ (Russell 2010: 120). Domestic manners were considered ‘the foundations of a truly civil society’ (Russell 2010: 198).

Britishness and hospitality in rural Australia and the outback Gentility and its associated codes of manners and etiquette that were a fundamental part of the evolution of colonial Australia’s urban society were both similarly and differently constituted in rural Australia and its more remote outback regions. Much imagery of rural colonial Australia is focused on the myths of ‘the tough bushman’, which were popular in the 1890s–1900s, inspired by the poems of Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson (Lawrence 2003b: 212). According to Mary Shaw, this mythology was part of an ‘easy romanticism’ about life in remote Australia, propounded by those who had ‘viewed the outback from the homestead or the saddle rather than the shearers’ hut or the foot-slogging track’ (1987: 181). Lawrence and others have gone further to stress the urban biases of such authors, and the ‘anti-domestic/anti-feminine’ and ‘masculinist ideal’ of this mythology, as a ‘deliberate creation of a demonstrably non-British iconography at a time when Australian nationalism was burgeoning’ (Lawrence 2003b: 212, 213). As argued by Nicholas Gill, ‘mythologies of the outback … constitute a means by which various interests attempt to realise their visions of the inland and of Australia’ (2005: 40). ‘Pastoralism has featured significantly in historical processes of nation building’ (Gill 2005: 40), with ‘the mythology of the Outback and the Bush … still core to Australian identity’ (Mitchell et al. 2012: 324).

Thus, in the private domestic sphere of all middle- and working-class Australians towards the end of the nineteenth century, social mobility was not necessarily a problem for ‘household environment[s] inculcated with deep habits of decorum, modesty and good table’ (Russell 2010: 198). The first publication on etiquette that was exclusively for the Australian market was published in 1886 (Russell 2010: 194), when a much wider segment of Australian society was becoming more upwardly mobile and aspiring to gentility. As argued by Russell, ‘[e]tiquette books promised to guide such social newcomers towards a better sense of grace and courtesy, tact and hospitality’ (Russell 2010: 196). Table manners received considerable attention and were at the ‘top of the list of rules for children’ (Russell (2010: 215). ‘The rituals of the table served to refine, restrain, cultivate, and elevate the act of eating, removing it from its association with primitive appetite’ (Russell 2010: 216).

As also argued by Gill (2005: 49), ‘the process of pastoral settlement has clearly not been one that encourages diversity’. Indeed, somewhat at odds with the ‘tough bushman’ image are visions of a rural elite. In the early colonial years, these were young men of respectable, even aristocratic, British backgrounds who effectively ‘squatted’ on land not claimed for European settlement and who had

As argued above, for much of the nineteenth century, most colonial Australians saw themselves as at least socially 16

Britishness, Gentility and Hospitality in Australian Society ‘ambitions to rise as [English] “gentlemen” in fluid social and economic conditions of colony’ (Russell 2010: 84). Russell stressed the links with Melbourne society of these squatters, who often had vast holdings across the colony of Victoria (2010: 18). Their ‘attempts to create standards of gentility in their country homes’ was part of their quest for the ‘legitimacy for their claims for pastoral dominance’, and to assert ‘their own status in society’ (Russell 2010: 7–8), land ownership being a critical criterion for the English landed gentry. Russell argued that these squatters could often be ‘social outsiders’ (2010: 47), though, involved in a bush life characterised by racial violence ‘for the sake of gentlemanly prosperity’ (Russell 2010: 94). For the first pioneers, this bush life was frequently a primitive, uncultivated, undomestic life, roughing it in ‘squalid huts’ and living on tea and damper (traditional Australian soda bread made on a campfire) in the ‘most ungentlemanly conditions’ (Russell 2010: 88–91). According to Russell (2010: 358), these were ‘pioneers who carried scraps of [civilisation’s] architecture with them into the wilderness [and who] were agents of civilisation, but they were also its barometer. If they failed – if in their bark huts and threadbare clothes they forgot the higher purpose of their [civilising] presence – then all were at risk’.

… an unspeakably disgusting brute’ (Desmond, cited by Russell 2010: 356). Conversely, as noted by Russell (2010: 354–58), Malcolm Donald, in The Real Australian (1912), defended the squatter as ‘a very decent fellow’ with a house ‘invariably redolent of comfort and an infinite refinement [and] pursuits … of the average English country gentleman’. As noted above, Russell and others have stressed the significance of women in maintaining the concepts of ‘the gentry’ and ‘gentility’ in nineteenth-century urban Australia. Gendered performance to demonstrate social status was undoubtedly equally important for rural Australia, as Lawrence (1999) has argued for the mining industry. Russell argued (2002: 433) that the discovery of gold in the 1850s, but also after 1839 and in New South Wales ‘the rapid spread of pastoralism … helped unsettle the social structures of the penal colony’. Much of the mythology of the ‘tough bushman’ centres around mining and life at the diggings. However, the novelist Elizabeth Ramsay-Laye described her own, somewhat contrasting, social circle at the Forest Creek gold diggings, Castlemaine, Victoria (1861, as cited by Russell 2010: 204). Shortly after her arrival in this mining community, Ramsay-Laye had received an invitation to tea in another tent, where she ‘found herself surrounded by elegantly dressed ladies sporting the “newest fashions”, listening to good music [on a piano], and able for a time to forget “we were in the land of diggers”’ (Russell 2010: 203–205). Russell referred here to ‘the self-conscious performance of the elegant manners of élite society’, through which some miners, and particularly their wives and female relatives, set themselves apart from the ‘uncouth barbarism of the majority of the diggers’.

From these tenuous beginnings, many second-generation squatters acquired wealth, built grand homes, and attempted to ‘maintain a semblance of cultivated manliness’ (Russell 2010: 48) and to emulate the lifestyles of the British country gentry (Russell 2002: 433; Waterhouse 2005: 114– 15), both in the rural regions closer to urban centres and also in the outback. Mrs Aeneas Gunn, the wife of a station manager in a remote region of the Northern Territory at the beginning of the twentieth century, referred to herself and her husband as ‘the gentry’ (1964: 108; see chapter three). Her claim to this social status, however serious, highlights that a concept of British gentility and an elite landed class, with accompanying codes of manners and etiquette, still pervaded remote areas of this social landscape and of the pastoral industry, into the twentieth century. Nevertheless, those claiming to belong to this elite rural class, and adopting its mores, constituted an ever more diversified pool. Shaw wrote of the outback in the 1890s–1900s that ‘[c]lass distinction was waning but never quite disappeared’ (1987: 181). She cited a vignette from Joseph Furby’s fictional account Such is Life (written in 1897 and published in 1903) of the accompanying rising levels of hospitality afforded to a man who visited the same station, first as a stockman, then as a bullock teamster and finally as a government inspector, and through which Furby sought to demonstrate that ‘social status, apart from all consideration of mind, manners and even money, is more accurately weighed on an Australian station than anywhere else in the world …’ (Furby 1903, as cited by Shaw 1987: 183).

As for the aspiring genteel miner, an important signifier of a squatting pastoralist’s social status was a home of ‘infinite refinement’ (Russell 2010: 356). Maintenance of this refinement, though, and associated social practices to demonstrate gentility, were generally considered the responsibility of the female members of the squatter’s family, if they actually lived on the station. Indeed, Shaw described how female members of the families of station owners, in more remote regions, were often expected to ‘go south for the summer’ (1987: 183), to Melbourne, or may not have ever resided on the station. According to Richard Waterhouse (2005: 115), at first many squatters’ wives who did reside on these pastoral stations were less well educated in the codes of gentility than their urban counterparts. By the 1870s, though, when OKH was first occupied, squatters’ wives ‘were seen as possessing special moral qualities’ and to fill ‘particular cultural roles’ as well as being ‘valuable economic acquisitions’ for the range of domestic tasks they were required to undertake because of the lack of available domestic servants (Waterhouse 2005: 116). According to Waterhouse (2005: 117), the presence of women ‘encouraged the establishment of formal codes of etiquette’. Australians are avid readers of British literature and this is particularly true in remote rural contexts (Waterhouse 2005: 119–21). As noted above, literature on etiquette was directed predominantly at a female readership. However, opportunities on isolated

In her consideration of the supposed gentility of the squattocracy in the first decades of the twentieth century, Valerie Desmond, in The Awful Australian (1911), described the Australian squatter as ‘drunk and uncouth 17

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? pastoral stations for the kinds of entertainment available in urban society, where women could display their manners and social etiquette, wheresoever acquired, were few if not non-existent. Many of the social codes and genteel practices in urban contexts in the mid- to later nineteenth century, described by Russell (1994), for separating ‘the people we know’ from the greater mass of the colonial urban population, would not have had the same objectives in the Australian outback. There, the preservation of gentility and ‘genteel performance’ – dressing for dinner, playing the piano (see Waterhouse 2005: 117) and good table manners (Russell 2010: 216–18) – were often a form of self-respect (see Allison and Cremin 2006: 54), and undoubtedly irrespective of the presence of other ‘people we know’ to whom to demonstrate such genteel performance.

also Goodwin 1999: 177–88) and cultivators, of men and the working classes, through dispensing tea. Tea-drinking is paid notably little attention by Young (2003), or by Russell in her study of English manners in Australian society, with only a reference to Elizabeth Ramsay-Laye’s description of the ‘table [that] had been spread “with cups and saucers of every size and pattern”’ (cited in Russell 2010: 204). These unmatched tea sets signalled the relative gentility of the tea-drinking party to which Ramsay-Laye had been invited (see discussion in chapter four, pp. 37– 39). A lack of attention to tea-drinking, on Russell’s part, is perhaps because tea-drinking permeated a wider sector of Australian society – signalling both middle-class gentility and working-class respectability – than that covered by her particular focus (see discussion in chapter eight, esp. pp. 117–119). However, the ways in which tea was drunk were very much part of Australia’s codes of etiquette, as in Britain, although, again, not in direct imitation.

An important and significant code of etiquette that essentially predated the arrival of ‘white’ women in outback NSW, though, was that of hospitality, which, Waterhouse argued, ‘[b]y the 1860s … was more or less demanded as a right’ (2005: 118). Through codes of hospitality, both men and women could display their manners without necessarily an association of such codes with concepts of the exclusiveness of gentility which would have further limited their already rare opportunities for social interaction, and increased their isolation.

Britain has generally been considered the world’s ‘premier tea drinking nation’ with tea-drinking per se embedded in British culture, or at least English culture (although see examples below from Wales and North America), across all classes by the late eighteenth century, according to Peter Griggs (2015: 25, 28). However, Griggs has argued that this premier position has actually been held by Australia for most of its history (2015: 44), where tea-drinking was a favoured, even considered an essential, activity of all Australians, irrespective of class or circumstance. Indeed, Australians have been claimed to be ‘most obsessive tea drinkers’, and their tea-drinking a ‘manic passion’, which Jessica Knight argued was ‘‘a symbol of empire’ and ‘a natural consequence of empire and identification with British civilisation’ and, along with flour and sugar, ‘propagated the expansion of the British empire’ (Knight 2011: 13, 14; see also for further references). ‘[T]ea was instrumental in preserving understandings of the British Empire and reinforcing conceptions of English identity’ (Knight 2011: 15).

Tea-drinking, gentility and Australian society A significant aspect of socialising and particularly of ‘genteel performance’, in Britain and Australia, is that of taking tea. Tea was first introduced into England in the 1650s. Anna Yentsch argued (1991: 223–25) that at first tea was a ‘masculine beverage’ and that women, in their role as hostesses, acted as subordinate servants to their husbands in serving tea to non-kin. She argued that tea ceremonies, originally performed for men in public tea houses, only became feminised after the mid-eighteenth century, when women gained power by organising such social rituals in the domestic sphere. However, Annie Gray has argued (2013: 23, 25) that by 1700 tea-drinking had become a social ceremony that women controlled (see also Goodwin 1999: 179–80). Gray argued (2013: 26) that, while throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century tea was drunk on different occasions during the day, it was particularly associated with the social and domestic rituals of women – first with the ‘tea ceremony’ of the leisured upper classes, and then, in the nineteenth century, with ‘mid-afternoon tea’, which was also indulged in by the middle classes. She argued (2013: 35) that the period between 1820 and 1860 was the key period for ‘the development of tea into a formalised highly gendered and named occasion, … “afternoon tea”’, and that, as hostesses for such occasions, women were able to control these social gatherings, particularly of women but of men too. Such gatherings took place predominately in the home, and, by the late nineteenth century, also at public events (Gray 2013: 31–32, 37–39). In these contexts, elite and middleclass women were seen to act as social ‘gatekeepers’ (see

Griggs (2015) discussed the many and changing roles of tea and tea-drinking in Australia and in Australian society. Tea was a suitably portable thirst quencher in a land with a highly mobile workforce, with a climate that stimulated the need for liquids, and where water was not always drinkable if not boiled (Griggs 2015: 26, 33). At first, tea was a luxury of which convict women (being considered neither genteel or respectable) were deprived, but by the 1820s it was the ‘preferred non-alcoholic drink of many colonists’ and by 1883 it was considered the ‘national beverage’ (Griggs 2015: 25, 27, 30). Whether it was drunk from a quart-sized pannikin or a dainty teacup, ‘acts of hospitality revolved around tea’ (Griggs 2015: 33). As well as being a way of drinking hygienically (Brooks 2005: 3; see also Gunn 1964: esp. 89–92), tea-drinking was ‘important as a way of passing time, in vogue … among all classes’ (Griggs 2015: 34). As such, tea-drinking was a ‘central part of the system of “calls” exchanged amongst middle- and upper-

18

Britishness, Gentility and Hospitality in Australian Society class society women’ (Griggs 2015: 34), and provided an opportunity for the display of gentility and manners.

the twentieth century, in homestead gardens (e.g. Figure 6) and on picnics in the bush (e.g. Figure 7), demonstrate how these women could manipulate these landscapes and, perhaps more significantly here, how they recorded such special occasions which served to create ‘the elegance of afternoon tea in an Australian [rural] context’ (Knight 2011: 27), and also portray this gentility and femininity to distance audiences. Knight argued that such practices were ‘monopolised by women’ (2011: 35). However, given the limited opportunities in remote environments, such occasions to demonstrate gentility were seldom exclusively reserved for female participants, as these photographs indicate. Gray noted (2013: 36, 38) that the late nineteenth century saw a ‘stronger masculine element’ in the English ‘national institution’ of afternoon tea in the second half of the nineteenth century, although with men in the minority.

Knight (2011) discussed the social roles of tea-drinking, particularly the ‘ritualised break’ of ‘afternoon tea’ (2011: 31) as part of gendered performance in Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (1870–1914). She described how ‘ceremonies … around afternoon tea’ were ‘regularised and ritualised’ to define ‘boundaries between gender, public and private, rural and urban, work and leisure’ (Knight 2011: ii, 14), and to signal your place in Australian society, both as hostess and as guest. She noted that ‘afternoon tea could include tea, coffee and hot chocolate’ (Knight 2011: 5), although Gray demonstrated an apparent increasing preference for tea in Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (2013: 25–26). Like Gray, though, Knight emphasised the importance of social occasions of tea-drinking for middle-class women in Australia.

Britishness and material culture in rural Australia Russell commented (2010: 7) that, for British colonists, the ‘civilisation’ concept that formed their identities in the lands left behind was ‘carried in their heads, imagination and technical knowledge … [and] not easily carried with them in a tangible form … in[to] an empty land’. However, as Sarah Tarlow argued (1999: 266), identities are ‘internally generated and created through, amongst other things, material culture, and material practices’. Such material culture, while seemingly less portable than ideas and imaginations, was both a facilitator of this colonial transference of identity, imagination, ideas and technology, and also served as an active agent to reinforce these concepts in these ‘empty’ lands. As argued by Johnson, ‘[m]aterial culture is central to the constitution of society’ (2003: 29). In this regard, ‘tangible forms’ of ‘civilisation’ were indeed extremely important to colonists, an importance their archaeological traces can serve to demonstrate. As also argued by Johnson (2003: 22), archaeological evidence is ‘constitutive’ of cultural realities rather than ‘reflective’ of them. Different groups used and manipulated material culture to express their ‘different understandings of the world in which they lived’ (Lawrence 2003c: 21).

As with their own codes of etiquette, though, Australians developed their own cultural identity in relation to tea consumption that diverged from the English norm, a divergence, according to Knight, that resulted from ‘bush ethos’ and codes of hospitality (2011: 21–22). Indeed, Knight argued that ‘rural Australia often rejected the British norm that tea should be only associated with domesticity, family ritual and intimacy’ (2011: 21). Here she juxtaposed tea-drinking in rural and urban Australia, arguing that ‘in a rural setting there was a direct link between tea and masculinity so that men had direct access to tea in a manner that was denied to women; however, in the urban, domestic setting, it was women who had the privileged access to tea’ (2011: 21). This is a seemingly limited perspective, influenced perhaps by the mythology of the ‘tough bushman’ and associated concepts of ‘masculinity, independence and egalitarianism’ (Knight 2011: 21–22). While tea was the main Australian non-alcoholic drink, as argued by Griggs, and men certainly outnumbered women in rural contexts, ‘the billy4 was [indeed] democratic and used universally across gender, class and both settler and Aboriginal populations for a variety of reasons’ (Knight 2011: 21). As Knight acknowledged, ‘the taking of tea is a recurring theme in Ada Cambridge’s novels’ (2011: 19), which Knight described as ‘an integral part of the rhythm of station life’, taken with all meals and in between (2011: 23–24). Women who made their homes on such stations in rural and remote parts of Australia, as discussed by Cambridge, were not ‘denied’ access to tea but could develop ways of manipulating its access and their pastoral landscapes as a means for creating a genteel environment, but often with a ‘greater acceptance of informality [that] differed significantly from the etiquette expected in the cities’ (Knight 2011: 24). Any such women would rarely receive or pay social ‘calls’ where they were able display their gentility, like their urban counterparts, however. Nevertheless, photographs taken in the first decade of

In the colonies, ‘British and indigenous identities were constituted through practices and attitudes grounded in the material realm’ (Lydon 2003: 174). While the ‘remarkable similarities’ of material-cultural assemblages in colonial Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa ‘are a product of [their] shared history of imperialism’, a focus on this shared material culture and ‘[g]lobalising explanations’ has often served ‘to minimalize regional and temporal differences’ (Lawrence 2003c: 20–21) in their use and significance. According to Lawrence, ‘because of their ubiquity, the British [have been considered] an unproblematic category that is frequently the silent “other” in archaeological studies of identity, race, gender …’ (Lawrence 2003a: 1). However, ‘the British’, as noted above, are not a ‘single monolithic group’, nor a timeless group, at home or abroad. As Lawrence argued, ‘[s]hared culture that pervaded all social levels has never been a norm in the British Isles, and fragmentation increased through the

4 This is a reference to the metal billy, with a wire handle, a can used to boil water over an open fire to make tea.

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Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 6. Three women and one man taking tea from ‘pretty china’ in the garden at Morden Station, 1909. (Photo H. U. Grieve, courtesy of South Australia Library, photo D-7872-L-46.)

Figure 7. Picnic at Salmon Ponds, Tasmania, 1910. (Reproduced with permission of the Tasmania State Library and Archive, photo PH30/1/678.238.)

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Britishness, Gentility and Hospitality in Australian Society nineteenth century, as the older system of ranked society gave way to the pronounced divisions between lower, middle, and upper classes’ (2003c: 21). This extends to Britain’s dominions, and to the constitution and meanings of their material worlds.

more elite Welsh, it was ‘very much an alien concept to rural poor in north Pembrokeshire’ (2003: 132). When tea-drinking did take place, Brooks argued, it was a practice that demonstrated status and association with a new British identity. Somewhat conversely, though, Linda Garver has argued that evidence for tea-drinking in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century colonial contexts should not be perceived as a purely British habit, but rather as an ‘international practice resulting from and contributing to the increasing interconnectedness of the early modern world’ (2015: esp. 33). Garver’s view is from a trading perspective that reflects Lake’s view of political and intellectual affiliations in late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Australia before ‘[p]re-war AngloSaxon identifications with Germany and the United States gave way to new incitements to imperial loyalty and White Britishness’ (2013: 36). Nevertheless, both Brooks’ and Garver’s conclusions about relationships between ceramics and Britishness serve to demonstrate how factors such as rurality and levels of internationalism and connections to world markets have important impacts on social practice. Yentsch (2011: esp. 184–85) similarly used relative quantities of various tablewares and teawares to demonstrate ethnic differences in women’s lives among households in California that predominantly dated to the second half of the nineteenth century. However, all these studies have focused on the presence alone of particular types of material culture to identify associations with Britishness, rather than on the ways in which those objects would have been used.

Young stressed (2003: 7) that ‘the thesis of Greater Britain depends on the distribution of material goods’, which in all aspects of their distribution depends on consumption practices. And such goods only have value inasmuch as they service a need or practice – a ‘need’ that is as often as much governed by socio-cultural attitudes as by mere survival in these new environments. Lawrence observed, in contrast to Russell, that across the British world, ‘even the most isolated … were able to possess the latest of manufactured goods’ (2003c: 22). Besides manners, Lawrence argued that ‘the skilled consumption of appropriate goods … indicated the adoption of the … moral values’ of the middle classes, and was the ‘means by which members’ positioned themselves and others within its ‘fluid and highly contested’ rankings (Lawrence 2003c: 22). However, possessing the goods alone ‘was not sufficient to be acknowledged as genteel; they had to be used with the correct discipline’ (Young 2003: 4), involving a ‘highly nuanced form of knowledge’ (Lawrence 2012, cited by Cleall 2013). This is perhaps nowhere more valid than for the consumption of food and drink and the apparatus that defined and displayed this consumption as socio-cultural practice, whose variations in type and quality were used as ‘mark[s] of distinction by the middle class’ (Lawrence 2003c: 28). Beaudry has also stressed (2003: 292–93) that ‘colonialism cannot be understood as ‘global [and] transhistorical’, arguing that there is a need for ‘inspecting variation both within Britain’ and, what is particularly important for this study, ‘within its colonies’, and ‘exposing gaps and silences and questioning historical givens … finding ways of complicating and problematising “Britishness”’, and exposing the ‘sorts of subtle differences in the deployment of material culture’. She stressed (2003: 294) ‘how material culture in all its manifestations … figures in colonial discourses as part of local knowledge in multifarious contexts and [that we need] to examine the ways [this material culture] is used in the construction of cultural meanings and cultural identities’. Beaudry specifically cited ceramics as ‘potentially multivalent props’ in the ‘challenge to push our interpretations beyond bland generalisations about “colonial” and “imperial” material culture and colonial interactions’.

Gray argued (2013: 33) that, in the nineteenth century, the material culture of the home, and particularly tablewares and teawares, took on more significance for women. Gray stressed the significant association of the apparatus used for tea-drinking, especially ceramics, with women (2013: 28–29), a significance that is central to Yentsch’s argument above for nineteenth-century Irish Californian households. In her largely text-based analyses of ‘genteel performance’ and tea-drinking in Australian, mainly urban, society, Knight (2011) likewise highlighted the significant role of material apparatus in this essentially feminised activity and its performance. She stressed that the ‘wealth-related expectations and social ideals’ associated with the ritual of afternoon tea ‘revolved largely around the material goods … [t]he tea silver service [being] the primary apparatus used in the taking of tea, and … an expense that the working class could not afford due to budget limitations [and therefore] an emblem of respectability, a marker of wealth, and a desirable artefact for middle class possession’ (Knight 2011: 32). She noted the recurring theme of such material goods as fashionable components of afternoon tea in newspaper reports, such as the report in the Queanbeyan Age (1880) of ‘pretty china, beautiful women, artistic surroundings, intellectual and informal chat, music, flowers [and] flirting’ (cited by Knight 2011: 30). As argued by Knight (2011: 47–48):

In this regard, Alasdair Brooks used ceramic tablewares excavated from rural houses in Pembrokeshire, Wales, dating from the end of the eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth century, to demonstrate how a ‘“new” British identity and its ideologies [spread] into Wales’ (2003: 119) at a fairly late stage for such ‘home’ communities. The discovery of more expensive, decorated teawares in these rural households, among the more ‘traditional’ Welsh tableware types, demonstrated to Brooks that, while teadrinking had a longer association with the English and

[a]fternoon tea could not be disassociated from the material goods that comprised the experience. The 21

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? sites could indicate the presence of white women ‘denies the possibility of seeing different versions of masculinity’ in the bush, where, Lawrence argued, the concept of ‘domestic respectability … transcended gender’ (Lawrence 2003b: 220). Donald’s argument that the Australian squatter was ‘a very decent fellow’ is based in part on having ‘dined with him and enjoyed his “open-handed hospitality”’ (cited by Russell 2010: 356–57), undoubtedly in a congenial setting of domestic respectability. Female assistance in the provision of this ‘congenial setting’ is not evidenced in Donald’s description, although this does not necessarily mean none existed.

teapots, teacups and saucers, sugar pot, tea tray and table were all necessary facets of the social custom, and reflected middle class wealth … [T]hat the Major [in Cambridge’s novel] could list each type [of teaware] suggests that it was not only of interest to women but appealed more broadly to people of a certain social standing. The china provides an avenue for explicating deeper social tensions … [It] is given a human dynamic in communicating how these material goods did not just exist in isolation in the comfort of the domestic but were markers of status in the commercial world. Knight focused on the period 1870–1914, and on genteel tea-drinking practices in colonial society. Paul Ward (2005: 269, 273) has highlighted further links between food, food consumption and British patriotism in the dominions during the First World War that did not of necessity pertain to concepts of gentility. These links show how a broad social range in the dominions expressed their Britishness and a ‘sense of imperial identity’, during this period of reasserted British loyalty, through food and social practice.

Conclusions The above discussions have emphasised the ways in which Australians developed their senses of their own identity, the relationships of these identities to Britishness and to British concepts of manners and etiquette, and to some extent the place of material culture in these codes of social practice. Russell stressed the importance of the reworkings of such concepts as the ‘cultural capital’ that was vital for social acceptance in Australia’s industrialised nineteenth-century urban societies and for ‘dawning national confidence’ (Russell 2002: 449, 253). There are evident contradictions in the Australian psyche, and current understandings of this psyche, in terms of Australian identity and Britishness and about social practice and etiquette. The extent and the significance of these contradictions (see Gill 2005) have often been underplayed in mainstream literature of the history of the Australian outback.

For rural Australia, in areas with less direct access to the social networks and fashions found in cities and their more immediate environs, little attention has been paid to the role of food consumption and associated material culture in the dissemination of Britishness and associated concepts of gentility and respectability. We do get some, perhaps surprising, insights into ‘genteel performance’ in the mining world, through material culture associated with food and drink consumption in this world. As well as Ramsay-Laye’s remark on the cups and saucers at the tea party in the tent at the Forest Creek diggings, Lawrence has emphasised finds of ‘refined ceramic tablewares’ from her excavations of the canvas tents of the diggers and their families at the Dolly’s Creek diggings, also in Victoria (2000). She argued that these vessels were the ‘accoutrements of [the] simple but respectable domestic dining etiquette’ of these diggers’ families, contrasting with the bush legend of ‘tough individuals in harsh conditions … and, above all, a particular version of masculinity’ (Lawrence 2003b: 211). Both mining and pastoral industries were potent settings as sources for the bush masculinity myth (Lawrence 2003c: 213). For the pastoral world, however, there have been few material-cultural studies to demonstrate the shortcomings of this myth. Lawrence drew attention to evidence for transfer-printed earthenwares, including matching teawares,5 that were recorded at the short-lived stock camp of Burghley in the uplands of central Tasmania, occupied reportedly by indentured servants and assigned convicts from 1823–c.1839 (2003b: 216–19; see also Murray 1993: 507–509). As Lawrence argued, the question of whether such apparent signs of domesticity at these rural industrial

The focus of this volume is on the ways in which Australian social codes, and their associations with Britishness and middle-class gentility, impacted on social interactions around food and drink consumption in outback Australia in a pastoral context. More specifically, it concerns dining and tea-drinking activities and the role of material culture in the maintenance and manipulation of the social practices and codes associated with these activities in this context. Lawrence has emphasised the arguments of past scholars that colonists on ‘isolated rural properties’ have been ‘obliged to lay aside the accomplishments of the Drawing Room for those of the Kitchen and the farm yard’. (Lawrence 2003c: 23, quoting Butler 1974: 293). She called for ‘more subtle, nuanced analyses of who [the colonisers] were’ and a need to consider the small scale (Lawrence 2003b: 10). This study investigates this small scale, to expose the ‘sorts of subtle differences [that] the deployment of material culture’ can achieve, and ‘to push our interpretations beyond bland generalisations’ (Beaudry 2003: 293), for greater insights into the microhistories of these people. It also assesses whether and how ‘the most isolated were able to possess the latest of manufactured goods’ that were needed to display cultural packages of ‘domesticity, gentility and refinement’ (Lawrence 2003c: 22). To this end, the study investigates the artefactual remains of fine ceramic tableware and teawares and their social roles in this relatively remote outback pastoral context, and assesses

5 It should be noted here that the occupation of this site predates the period in which Gray has argued that matching sets became ‘desirable’ (see ch. 4, p. 37). It is possible that these tea sets ‘matched’ because of a supply of a limited variety of such goods to Tasmania during this penal period. No details of these ceramics have been provided.

22

Britishness, Gentility and Hospitality in Australian Society the social significance of these finewares in terms of their dates, prices and perceived values. First, though, the next chapter provides a historical framework for the pastoral settlement of the western districts of New South Wales. It also outlines documentary sources that demonstrate

attitudes to Britishness and gentility, and that indicate the opportunities for, and material apparatus used in, social interactions around dining and tea-drinking in later nineteenth- and earlier twentieth-century contexts which are comparable to that of OKH.

23

3 Social Interaction and Social Networks in Outback NSW, Australia P. Allison As discussed in the previous chapter, social historians and archaeologists writing about the social performances of dining and tea-drinking in the British colonial world have not generally considered the enactment of these activities in remote regions with limited transport and opportunities for social interaction. Little attention has been paid, for example, to the practicalities and the logistics for social rituals such as paying calls and taking afternoon tea. Opportunities for such enactment were relatively unproblematic in urban and semi-urban areas (cf. Knight 2011; see Hayes 2011: 39; 2014a: 69). In the Australian outback, as in other comparably remote regions of the British Empire, though, social networking and the maintenance and the visibility of social standards considered appropriate for colonial households were complicated by unreliable means of transport, by often vast distances between individual households, and also by limited access to the supply of material apparatus required for such social maintenance and display.

access was no doubt as much a factor of social standing and aspirations as of physical access to relevant markets. Changing transport and communication systems in the west Darling region As discussed in chapter one, the first European settlement of the west Darling region was in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Prior to the 1850s, European occupants of this region were mainly ‘ticket-of-leave’ men, referred to as ‘on the track’ and employed by absent landowners to mind livestock (Maiden 1989: 14). Initially these were men only, with the first report of European women or children in this area in the mid- to late 1850s (see Hardy 1969: 77; Maiden 1989: 20–21). Such men often travelled on foot and, if sensible, by night to avoid the heat. In January 1869, four men nearly all died of thirst as they travelled for three days and nights trying to reach Menindee from Topar Lake, c.100 km to the north-west (South Australian Register, Adelaide, 29 Jan. 1869: 2). Where there were any recognisable routes, they comprised tracks for moving livestock, called stock routes (see e.g. Hardy 1969: 82, 97–98). The main transport comprised horseback and bullock wagons. According to Sandra Maiden (1989: 13), the bullock teams were particularly scarce in this region, as they could be more gainfully employed in the Victorian goldfields.

Improved transport and communication systems through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had a significant impact on the ability of outback households to socialise and to maintain appropriate social standards. As noted by Pietsch (2013: 448), though, the many networks of the ‘British world’ which moved ‘people, products, and information around the globe … burst into life, but they also died’. This can apply at both global and local scales. However, the impact of these systems on social practice is not necessarily direct or intuitive. Indeed, early colonists in remote contexts went to considerable lengths to overcome the difficulties that distance and lack of such systems put in the way of social behaviour. A photograph taken in 1897 of Emily and William Kent sharing tea with Gertrude and Jack Johnson at the Mount Margaret goldfields, 900  km north-east of Perth in Western Australia (Isaacs 1990: 14; Figure 8 in this volume), provides an intriguing glimpse of a well-laid tea table – with white tablecloth, and white china teapot and cups and saucers – in front of a rather crudelooking brush and canvas-roofed dwelling. While this display was possibly posed for the photograph, it indicates that considerable effort had been taken by this family to transport this tea-drinking apparatus, at least from Perth if not actually from Britain, to show their families ‘back home’ that they could maintain respectable standards, despite the incongruousness of their living conditions and the remoteness of their location. Paterson observed, from analyses of their material culture, that some outback homesteads would have ‘had greater access to expensive luxury goods’ than others (2011: 258). However, such

Even in the 1880s and 1890s, and even further east, transport systems were minimal for most pastoralists. Mrs Robert Biscoe remembered that, when her father bought the Pallal Station near Bingara, some 500–600  km north of Sydney in 1886, ‘Many long buggy rides were necessary to reach the railways, but eventually, we arrived at Sydney, then Tamworth, where a Cobb & Co. coach took us the hundred miles [160 km] to Pallal and a new and happy life’ (Biscoe n.d.: 3). She also remembered that the ‘only way of getting supplies from Sydney was by bullock or a dray … from Tamworth, 100 miles away’ (Biscoe n.d.: 9). Despite its seeming greater remoteness than Pallal Station, though, Kinchega Station had a more effective, if only sporadic, form of transport. The first navigation of the Murray River in 1853 meant that paddle steamers coming and going from Adelaide could now transport goods to and from the junction of the Darling and Murray Rivers, so drays were only needed up the Darling River, reducing travel time by up to a quarter (Hardy 1969: 75–82; Shaw 1987: 15–16). In 1859, the first trading run by steamer was made 800 km up the Darling River to Mount Murchison, 25

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 8. From left: Emily Kent, Jack Johnson (holding baby), William Kent and Gertrude Johnson sharing tea at the Mount Margaret goldfields, Western Australia, 1897. (Sourced from the collections of the State Library of Western Australia and reproduced with the permission of the Library Board of Western Australia, photo BL 198P.)

In the 1860s, camels were imported into South Australia and thrived in the Australian climate, pulling ‘heavily loaded wagons, or travelling in single file, under the control of their Indian or Afghan masters’ (Kearns 1987: 24–25). By 1869, in the west Darling region, Thomas Elder’s camel trains were passing ‘through Wilcannia with stores for Mount Murchison and stations further out, returning with wool bound for Adelaide’ (Withers 1989: 202). ‘[T] hey were used again in the dry years of the ‘eighties and ‘nineties for they survived on rough forage and could be trained to go without water for long periods’ (Withers 1989: 202). These cameleers, or hawkers, ‘perform[ed] a valuable and economical service’, transporting ‘wool from remote stations to railhead and river steamer stops’ (Waterhouse 2005: 60–61), and ‘plying their wares and carrying foodstuffs, bales of cloth, household utensils, clothing and footwear from one sheep station or mining settlement to another’ (Kearns 1987: 10). They provided a particularly valuable service when the Darling River was unnavigable. However, they were often treated with suspicion (Waterhouse 2005: 61). Arthur Hayes told his wife, Bertha, not to let hawkers in the gate to the homestead (Robin Taylor, pers. comm., conversation, Oct. 1998). However, they often knew the kinds of goods that would appeal to the European, and especially British, women on these outback stations. David Dumaresq’s family tells a

passing through Kinchega and Menindee (Hardy 1969: 85). This further inland navigation, now of the Darling River, improved transport efficiency and lowered costs (see Kearns 1970: 4), making this region an attractive area for pastoralists. H. B. Hughes, the leaseholder of the Kinchega Pastoral Estate, owned his own paddle steamer, Decoy, reportedly ‘the largest and most powerful boat on the river’ (Silver Age, 28 Sept., 1886, cited in Maiden 1989: 95). He also owned barges imported from Glasgow and in operation from 1879 (Kearns 1970: 4). However, floods and droughts and the resulting vagaries of the water levels, and numerous snags from trees falling into the river, meant that the Darling was often unnavigable and that this mode of transport was unreliable (Maiden 1989: 21–23). Even at the beginning of 1860, one year after it was open for trade (Hardy 1969: 86–87), the Darling was unusable for transport. In the early twentieth century, river transport was still important for the west Darling region, though, and still unreliable. Margaret Carter lived in OKH between about 1917 and 1928 as the child of Bertha and Arthur Hayes, the Kinchega Station overseer (see Appendix 10). Mrs Carter recalled that ‘… steamboats could get up the river only when the weather was favourable, hence the huge storerooms near the house [with weights, scales etc.] …’ (in ‘Kinchega Memories’, The Chronicle[?] 1985 – Robin Taylor, pers. comm., fax, 14 Dec. 1998). 26

Social Interaction and Social Networks in Outback NSW, Australia story about a hawker arriving unannounced and bringing their maternal grandmother’s family a reportedly Chinese porcelain tea set while they were living on the cattle station Bluff Downs in central North Queensland in the late nineteenth century (David Dumaresq, pers. comm., email, 22 July 2018). While the story may not be verifiable, it emphasises the relationship between these hawkers, these women, and these material symbols of social status.

doing a 1000-mile [over 1,600 km] trip to visit their other stations of Balaclava, Kars, Mulculca and finally Kinchega. This motor-car trip was significant enough to be reported on the front page of the local newspaper (Barrier Miner, 25 Oct. 1915: 1). In July 1919, the railway line from Broken Hill to Menindee was opened, a rail link which would have facilitated inhabitants of Broken Hill in taking their summer vacations at the Menindee lakes (Maiden 1989: 147). At this stage, though, while there was a rail line from Sydney to Cobar and Ivanhoe, there were only stock routes covering over 260 km from Cobar to Wilcannia and more than 200 km from Ivanhoe to Menindee (Robinson 1919; see also NSWrail.net: Menindee Station). The rail link from Sydney to Menindee, through Condobolin and Ivanhoe, was completed in 1927, which put Menindee in ‘the limelight’ again (see Maiden 1989: 147, citing Sydney Mail, 9 Nov. 1927), and meant rail travel and transport was now possible from Sydney to Adelaide. This route was further improved in 1938 with a diesel-electric train, the ‘Silver City Comet’, which travelled through Broken Hill to Parkes, to the west of the Blue Mountains (Walkabout, 1 Sept. 1938). During the 1930s–1950s, ‘special trains’ were often employed to transport people from Broken Hill to Menindee for social and competitive horse events such as race meetings and gymkhanas (Barrier Miner, Thursday 2 Apr. 1936: 2) and, vice versa, from Menindee to Broken Hill for shopping (Barrier Daily Truth, Friday 21 Aug. 1953: 6). From the 1940s, air travel also added a further dimension to outback travel. In March 1944, ‘An aeroplane with a crew of five made a forced but safe landing on Kinchega Station in the area known as Dry Lake and had to walk about 20 miles [32 km] to Menindee for help’ (Barrier Daily Truth, 18 Mar. 1944: 3).

In 1883, following earlier discoveries of minerals in the Barrier Ranges, a boundary rider between Mount Gipps and Kinchega Stations, Charles Rasp, discovered what was to become the richest silver and lead mining area in the world (see e.g. Hardy 1969: 167–97). Here, the mining town of Broken Hill grew rapidly into a wealthy inland urban centre, often called ‘The Silver City’. In 1888, a private railway was installed from Silverton, on the west side of the Barrier Ranges, to Broken Hill, connecting this new mining town to Adelaide and South Australia, not to NSW and Sydney, and ‘deal[ing] a body blow for the Darling River communities based on the steamer trade’ (Hardy 1969: 170–72; see also Jeans 1972: 200). Maiden reported (1989: 106) that Menindee, which had been an important stop for Darling River trade, along with ‘every other community in the far western division of the state’, was outshone by Broken Hill, and in the 1890s was ‘very much in decline’. In 1886, though, there were four pubs and two stores at Menindee and coaches to Broken Hill. Despite this now more efficient, reliable and less problematic transport system from Adelaide to Broken Hill, travel for the 130  km between the Broken Hill railhead and Kinchega Station was still by horse coach (The Age, Melbourne, 16 Aug. 1895: 6). In the closing years of the nineteenth century, there were significant changes in another form of communication, however. In 1894, Alfred Hughes, son of H. B. Hughes and manager of Kars Station, the neighbouring station to Kinchega Station on the Kinchega Pastoral Estate, erected an Argyle telephone system which was intended to cover a distance of some 125  km (Riverina Recorder, 16 May 1894: 1), connecting Kars Station, where Alfred Hughes was manager (Kearns 1970: 6), to Kinchega Station and providing a useful means of communication for the managers of these two stations on the estate. Telegraph poles recorded in the vicinity of OKH (Allison 1998: 39) may have been part of this communication system to this homestead.

Thus, the period in which OKH was occupied saw immense changes in possibilities for travel – for the homestead occupants to visit neighbouring stations or townships, and for any such neighbours and more distant visitors to visit them – for communication, and for the transport of goods. The frequency of available transport, for people and for goods, was increased from sporadic and unreliable to more than weekly, with associated improvements in traveller comfort – from on foot and by horseback or bullock wagon to diesel-electric rail transport, motor car, and even aeroplane. Such changes altered the ways in which the occupants of OKH could socialise and whom they could socialise with.

Motor-car transport reached this region in about 1911 and Alfred Hughes was possibly one of the first in the district to order a Ford (Barrier Miner, 30 May 1911: 3). The motor car subsequently become an important mode of transport for the Hughes and their employees between the various stations on the Kinchega Estate. In 1914, Mr A. C. Carter, manager of Kinchega Station, was driven, by a driver called Hamil, ‘for about a week, possibly over 100 miles [160  km]’ (Barrier Miner, 20 Apr. 1914: 3). In October 1915 Messrs. Harold and Edgar Hughes did a ‘1500-mile [over 2,400 km] motor trip’, travelling for three days from Broken Hill to Nocatunga, where they stayed a week before

Opportunities for social interaction in the Australian outback: women’s diaries and letters Not only did transport and communication systems change considerably over the period in which OKH was occupied, but this period also saw huge changes in the sizes and nature of outback European communities. Hand in hand with such logistical changes came changes in the landscape of opportunity for social interaction. However, while much has been written about pastoralism and pastoral life in 27

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? outback Australia (e.g. Gill 2014), often by the pastoralists themselves or their descendants (e.g. Haeusler 1989), little about the social aspects of this life in these remote contexts has been discussed.

In 1859, Matilda Hill, a small 21-year-old Scottish woman, arrived in Adelaide to join her brother and sister there (Wallace n.d.). In 1861, she met and married Abraham Wallace, and after 18 months they left for Queensland, having to cut their own track for much of the way. Mr Wallace was told by a shepherd they met that ‘he had made a great mistake in bringing his wife into such scenes’. En route, up the Darling River, they were accommodated at station homesteads, sometimes for up to a fortnight if flooding made local creeks impassable. At one point during this trip, Mrs Wallace did not see another white woman for eight weeks, and at another, it took them six days to travel seven miles (11.25  km). On reaching Mount Murchison, just north of Wilcannia and 200  km north-east of OKH, Mrs Wallace being too ill to travel, the Wallaces briefly opened a store, but then purchased land nearby and built a two-roomed house. Here Mrs Wallace spent many months at a time while her husband went on hawking trips. She was visited by local Aboriginal people, who would stay for a fortnight, and occasionally by the mailman, but otherwise she was alone. She recorded her loneliness, fear of attack from Aboriginal visitors, shortage of food and water, her illnesses, the mosquitoes, the floods, her house almost burning down, and losing six of her seven babies. Much of her report concerns her mere survival, both on their station and also when she did go, at her own insistence, with her husband to continue his journey to Queensland. During these travels, Mrs Wallace reported encountering only three other white women. She remarked that one of them did not at first offer her a glass of water or cup of tea, but then apologised for forgetting her manners, ‘not having seen a woman for so long’ (n.d.: 11–12). The Wallaces later acquired land that was to become Sturt Meadows Station, 77  km north-east of Broken Hill. Her husband continued his journeys to sell goods and drove sheep and cattle, leaving Mrs Wallace, even at Christmas, with her 10-year-old nephew, to care for the station and sheep and to supervise any station hands. Over one 11-month period, Mrs Wallace had only one visitor to the station, who was male and who asked for a cup of tea and to stay the night (n.d.: 18). He was the manager of the land on which they were living and had come to tell the Wallaces they had to leave.

Understandings of the social landscapes associated with the pastoral industry during the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries are based on letters, diaries and personal reminiscences, particularly of women of largely Anglo-Celtic descent, many of whom were the wives and descendants of managers and leaseholders of pastoral runs. The most pertinent in terms of what they tell us about their own social lives and opportunities for socialising, particularly for the west Darling region before and during the period in which OKH was occupied, are: Mrs Matilda Wallace’s account (n.d.) of living and raising sheep in the west Darling region in the 1860s to 1871; Mary Shaw’s family history (1987) of Yancannia Station from c.1872 to the first decades of the twentieth century; and Mrs Myrtle Rose White’s reminiscences (1973) of her life from 1915 to 1922 as a manager’s wife on the ‘cattle king’ Sidney Kidman’s Lake Elder Station in north-east South Australia. Also relevant for insights into social life in this region at the very end of the nineteenth century are Mrs Delprat’s private letters to children (n.d.) between 1898 and 1900, when, as the wife of the general manager of BHP, she resided at Broken Hill, and Helena Una Grieve’s diary (n.d.) of her 1909 visit to friends on pastoral runs in the far north-west of the west Darling region. There are few or no such reports for the period after the early 1920s, when this area was less remote and therefore seemingly less remarkable. Another important report, contemporary with the earlier occupation of OKH, and which helps to contextualise these more local accounts, is that of the columnist Ada Cambridge, on her 30 years as the wife of a ‘bush’ clergyman in Victoria between 1870 and c.1900 (Cambridge 1903). Mrs Cambridge’s detailed report gives insights into her social life in urban and rural Victoria during these 30 years, and its contrasts with, and also familiarity in relation to, her experiences ‘at home’ in England. Even though her travels and her seven different homes were in the more settled regions of rural Victoria and Melbourne, she seldom travelled with her husband to visit his parishioners on pastoral stations, which were at least a day’s ride away (Cambridge 1903: 93). When she did, it was frequently a rough and dangerous trip which, on arrival, was celebrated by a dinner party to which neighbours on other pastoral stations were invited (Cambridge 1903: 93). Indeed, Mrs Cambridge was very impressed by the warm and genuine hospitality she received from strangers, particularly the women who, Mrs Cambridge records, did not usually meet other women they considered their social equals. She also writes of roadside picnics, parties on neighbouring farms and a Christmas ball. However, this was when she was living within 32 km of Ballarat and only 80 km from Melbourne (Cambridge 1903: 132–49), and so had greater access to a social network than the occupants of OKH.

For the following decades, we get some glimpses of the social life in the region, and particularly of the Reid and Shaw families, from Mary Shaw’s history of Yancannia Station (1987). Yancannia lies another c.180 km north of Mount Murchison and Wilcannia past the opal mines at White Cliffs. Mary Shaw’s grandfather, Thomas Shaw, had bought a half share in Yancannia in 1877 from William James Reid, and then a full share in 1895 (Shaw 1987: 66; 116). From 1872, Reid and ‘some’ of his nine children had lived at Yancannia, in a six-room wooden weatherboard homestead with a corrugated iron roof (Shaw 1987: 52; 59), although they also had a house in Geelong, near Melbourne, as a base for the children’s schooling (Shaw 1987: 149). Until the 1880s, when neighbouring runs were being occupied, the Reids were relatively isolated at Yancannia, but even in the 1880s their nearest neighbours 28

Social Interaction and Social Networks in Outback NSW, Australia were still ‘twenty to forty miles’ (32–65  km) away (Shaw 1987: 95–96). The first Yancannia homestead was subject to flooding, so in 1890–91 Will Reid, son of William James Reid, replaced it with a sandstone homestead, on a rocky rise, for himself and his family of three children, at least one of whom was born in this homestead, and also for his siblings when they visited during their holidays (Shaw 1987: 81–82, 147). Shaw described this homestead as having a large drawing room, dining room, nursery, numerous bedrooms, two maids’ rooms, and often a governess (1987: 184–86), and furnishings that included a piano (Shaw 1987: 83), a ‘sign of cultivation and refinement’ (Russell 1994: 69). From 1895, when the Shaws took full ownership of Yancannia Station, the station was managed by Oliphant Shaw, Thomas Shaw’s oldest son (Shaw 1987: 157). At first, Oliphant Shaw’s family, and his English wife Louise (Ludie), only spent the cooler parts of the year at Yancannia (Shaw 1987: 179). Shaw wrote that, in the years before the First World War, the Yancannia homestead complex had ‘grown to something like a township in its own right’ (1987: 183). She commented that at the end of the nineteenth century such a homestead always had guests – relatives, ‘transient visitors on business or friends and acquaintances who often stayed for weeks’ (Shaw 1987: 83). She wrote about the ‘elegance and sophistication’ of ‘the ladies who came to stay … [and] dressed for dinner every night’ at Yancannia homestead, but saw this as a sign of the upward mobility of Oliphant and his English wife, and not a general practice in the region (Shaw 1987: 189). By the beginning of the First World War, the Oliphant Shaws had moved ‘back’ to Britain, and E. P. Trapp took over managing Yancannia station, living the homestead with his family, with a room set aside for ‘Mr Shaw’ (Shaw 1987: 202–203). The station was sold to Sidney Kidman in 1917 (Shaw 1987: 212–13).

arrival at Broken Hill, and in an era largely contemporary with Mary Shaw’s report of her family at Yancannia Station, Helena Una Grieve paid a four-month visit to her friends at Mordern Station, one of the neighbours to Yancannia. She described this trip in detail in her diary (Grieve n.d.). Miss Grieve travelled by train from Adelaide to Broken Hill, then travelled another 65 km further north by another train to Tarrawinga. There, she was picked up by Mr Jackson from Wonnaminta Station, who then took her by buggy to Sturt Meadows Station, the Wallaces’ former station, which was occupied only by a jackaroo (young employee or trainee pastoralist). They stayed the night there, and were then delayed another night by rain before arriving at Wonnaminta two days later. At this homestead, Miss Grieve remarked on the ‘well-appointed dinner table’ and, the next morning, on ‘the entrance of the maid and morning tea …’ before breakfast. She remained at Wonnaminta for three nights, admiring the flower and vegetable gardens, the billiard room, the quality and quantity of the stores, and the telephone connection that brought Mr Daskein, from Mordern Station, for lunch, before a further buggy ride to her final destination. In her diary, Miss Grieve described the relatively rich and full social life at Mordern Station – where morning tea, at 7 am, was ‘an institution, where she had ‘black tea and cook’s cake’ in the shearers’ kitchen, and where she dressed for an hour of piano playing and then dinner. She also took tea in the garden with her hosts, from what appears to be a delicate-patterned, seemingly matching, china tea set (Figure 6). Her hosts also took her to visit other stations, including Yancannia, where they seem to have stayed for over a week, picnicking on the way with ‘tea served in bush fashion in huge pannikins out of a blackened billy’ – i.e. large metal mugs from a sootblackened metal pot or can with a wire handle, heated over an open fire. Another station that she visited with her host, Mr Dasein, was Tarella Station, south of Yancannia, where Miss Grieve described the teas and meals of mutton and jam tarts and was inspired to photograph the extensively laid dinner table at the homestead (Figure 9). Despite this seemingly elegant living and hospitality, though, it is evident that travelling in this area was still a slow and difficult process in the early years of the twentieth century. Much of Una Grieve’s diary was devoted to descriptions of this travel. The social gatherings, as at Yancannia Station, were relatively small and no doubt fairly quiet and largely family affairs, compared with contemporary urban life, including in Broken Hill. Nevertheless, these gatherings impressed Miss Grieve with the high standards of their sense of occasion and of their cuisine.

Opportunities for social interaction in this region were different again for the wife of Guillaume Delprat, the Dutch general manager of the Broken Hill mines in the late 1890s, whose letters to her family (Delprat n.d.) bear witness to the more urban social life, at least for some, after the discovery of rich mineral resources in the Barrier Ranges in the 1880s and the rapid growth of ‘The Silver City’. Mrs Delprat’s letters demonstrate her seemingly diplomatic status in this mining town, remarking on the dinner parties and the race meetings she attended; the many social calls her position required her to make and the guests she needed to receive, in a social circle with whose dress she was impressed but which she did not consider up to her normal standards. She also commented on the shortage of suitable domestic staff. The women and men in Mrs Delprat’s social circle lived in relatively close proximity to her in this rapidly developing, rich but remote, outback town where visits were made in a ‘buggy or wagonette’. At her dinner parties, she served ‘oysters, soup, fish, beef, vegetables, pudding and then coffee’. Her experiences contrast markedly with those of Matilda Wallace, and her opportunities for social interaction with those at the contemporary Yancannia station.

Even in the following decades of the twentieth century, families living on pastoral stations in the farthest northwest region of western NSW and in northern South Australia were still relatively isolated. Mrs Myrtle Rose White (1973) described her life as manager’s wife on Lake Elder Station, across the South Australian border from the ‘Corner Country’, between 1915 and 1922. Her account demonstrates continued lack of opportunity for leisure or for socialising with friends and visitors, particularly for those who were even more remote than the Shaws,

In 1909, half a century after Matilda Wallace moved to this west Darling region, over a decade after Mrs Delprat’s 29

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 9. The dinner table at ‘Tarella’, 1909. (Photo H. U. Grieve, courtesy of South Australia Library, photo D78721L/76a.)

transport and travel difficulties for her family at Pallal Station, north of Sydney, during the 1880s and 1890s. However, she also described how her father ‘loved to fill the house with visitors’ including with a huge marquee in the garden, with guests coming from ‘a radius of one hundred miles’ (160 km) and dancing for two nights (Biscoe n.d.: 11–12). She wrote that ‘[a]t the homestead … we seldom had less than fifteen for all meals, as the woolshed was within easy walking distance’, and ‘[o]ur dining room table held over twenty people’ (Biscoe n.d.: 14, 16). She recalled riding up to 40 miles (65 km) for ‘Picnic Races and Bachelors’ and Spinsters’ Balls’, or Christmas, and staying a couple of nights (Biscoe n.d.: 15–16). Despite Pallal Station being 100 miles (160 km) from the nearest railhead, and the likely paucity of near neighbours, the family entertained in a seemingly lavish and hospitable manner, more akin to Malcolm Donald’s description of ‘the squatter’ than that of Valerie Desmond (see chapter two, p. 17).

and probably less well placed socially. While Mrs White describes a comfortable homestead and domestic help (1973: 60–61, 85, 107), she reported that, during her seven years at Lake Elder Station, she used her guest room only seven times and had only one female guest (1973: 175). While she reported that ‘visitors dropped in out the blue’ (1973: 43), these visitors were mainly male and the visits mainly for business, such as pastoral workers seeking employment or passing through, or the mailman. They certainly provided opportunities for cups of tea and for exchanging news. However, such visits were not occasions to demonstrate social standards, as those described by Mary Shaw and Miss Grieve evidently were. Visits to neighbours, where such display may have been more appropriate, required Mrs White and her children to travel two to three days by wagonette and camel, and to stay for two weeks (White 1973: 71–75). In general, Mrs White’s account emphasises a limited cuisine and provides little evidence for dining and tea-drinking as social practice in her homestead. That said, certain genteel, or respectable, standards were still upheld at home by the White family, with specific mention of a ‘soup tureen’ in Mrs White’s dinner service (White 1973: 124).

A somewhat contrasting report to Mrs Biscoe’s, though, is that of Mrs Aeneas Gunn’s year, at least a decade later in 1902, while her husband was manager of Elsey Station in the Northern Territory (Gunn 1964, first published in 1908). The station was 480  km from Darwin and originally leased by Abraham Wallace, Matilda Wallace’s husband. In the early twentieth century, in this part of northern Australia that was even more remote than the west Darling region, Mrs Gunn only had rare contact with

The varied and changing social lives of these pastoral families in this west Darling region, and particularly for the women, are echoed in other remote parts of Australia. As mentioned above, Mrs Robert Biscoe described the 30

Social Interaction and Social Networks in Outback NSW, Australia people from outside her homestead. In her account, she provides specific information on the material culture of her household, particularly on her table and teawares. No doubt because of her short stay in the outback, she was especially attuned to the changes it brought to her social life, to her opportunities for female company, and to her own concepts of appropriate social standards. For example, she emphasised the supply of enamel cups and plates which were the usual drinking vessels for all at the homestead, even at Christmas (Gunn 1964: 250. She highlighted the arrival of a china teapot (Gunn 1964: 70) and later exclaimed in astonishment when ‘two china cups embedded in a supply of tea’ meant she could have ‘[tea] in china cups!’ (Gunn 1964: 92). Most tea-drinking reported by Mrs Gunn was carried out among the homestead occupants and station workers (e.g. 1964: 61), but also with some 250 visitors in one year, all male, who often stayed a day or two (1964: 66). Mrs Gunn explains that on such occasions she would use ‘one of the china cups, and the [male] guests enamel ware’, placing their saucers over the cups to keep off the flies (1964: 67). Saucers were also used by some for drinking hop beer from (Gunn 1964: 251). Some of these visitors were guests, with the ‘gentry’ (her own term for herself and her husband) at the Gunns’ table (Gunn 1964: 108), while others ‘grubbed in their camps’ (Gunn 1964: 68). Only three white women, and their children, visited Mrs Gunn in 1902, one of whom had been living ‘Inside’ (i.e. in an even more remote part) for 15 years (Gunn 1964: 152–154). Such exceptional events provided occasion for much ‘tea and biscuits’ and a ‘plentiful dinner’, which Mrs Gunn felt worthy of detailed description, given their rarity.

were provided by rail travel between more urban centres. However, the newcomers were not necessarily the types of people with whom pastoralists’ families would have interacted socially. The account of Mrs Delprat, at the top of the social hierarchy in Broken Hill, implies that her social circle did not extended outside this town. Even in these last decades of the nineteenth century, visitors to pastoralists’ homesteads were mainly men, travelling for business reasons, who perhaps stopped at intervening homesteads en route between these urban centres. While some of their travel was by train or river steamer, the final part of the journey would have been on horseback or by buggy. Travel by women and children was rare and any such visitors were largely restricted to family members, who might stay for weeks or even months. In the early twentieth century, increasing motorised transport in the west Darling region – more train networks, then motor cars – meant that more people could move more freely, including for reasons of leisure. This improved transport facilitated a new type of tourism for this region that affected both local travel, such as that between Broken Hill and the Menindee Lakes, and more distant travel. The seemingly quite remarkable hospitality that Una Grieve received, both en route and during her months-long stay with her friends and their neighbours in this region, highlights the marked changes that had taken place since Matilda Wallace’s time here in the 1860s–70s. While her visit was facilitated to some extent by train travel, the hospitality Miss Grieve received demonstrates that social visitors to much of this region were still a relatively rarity, and were treated accordingly. In even more remote regions, such as at Lake Elder Station and at the Elsey, though, Mrs White and Mrs Gunn, like Mrs Wallace nearly half a century earlier, were still generally without the company of other white women. While these circumstances meant they had little opportunity or need for a genteel, or even respectable, display of fine table settings, Mrs Gunn, in particular, obviously cherished any paraphernalia that provided her with a sense of gentility.

Summary These reports on social life on outback pastoral stations, mainly from pastoralists’ wives, indicate that opportunities for social interaction were largely governed by the availability of transport and communication systems. However, they also highlight that these systems were not the only factors that influenced social practice. In the west Darling region in the 1850s–70s, there were few opportunities of any social interaction. During this initial phase of European settlement, which developed in tandem with the navigation of the Murray and Darling River, what social life existed was among men, who were the main white inhabitants, in the pubs, such as those at river settlements like Menindee. Pastoralist families were scarce, and travel was on rough tracks. Indeed, Mrs Wallace appeared to have no social life at all, even at Christmas, and to have provided or received little hospitality. While she did stay for a fortnight at one homestead, en route to the west Darling region, she was not even offered a cup of tea by one of the few white women she encountered, to her husband’s surprise.

The evidence for the transport systems in the west Darling region, and from these women’s reports, indicate that, over the period in which the OKH was occupied (from c.1876 to 1955), travel time from urban centres to outback regions decreased from months to weeks to days. Depending on the purpose of the visit, the origin of the visitor, and the precise location of the homestead, the lengths of visits could be reduced from months to less than a day. OKH was closer to river transport than the others discussed above, but this was not a reliable form of transport. These changing conditions undoubtedly impacted on the types of visitors and visits to OKH, and on the enactment of the social duty of hospitality, in similar ways. The letters, diaries and accounts of these women provide us with perspectives from different parts of the outback and from different periods – from Matilda Wallace’s 12 years to Mrs Aeneas Gunn’s single year as a pastoralist’s wife. Besides the question of changing and differing transport systems, the socio-economic status and mores of both the homestead

In the 1880s and 1890s, as mining towns like Broken Hill, Silverton and White Cliffs grew and prospered, at the expense of the river settlements, there were many more people in this region and increased transport opportunities 31

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? occupants and their visitors also played a significant role in the types of social interaction and associated sense of the appropriate genteel display that could take place. The Biscoes, the Shaws and Una Grieve’s friends appear to have gone to considerable lengths to be able to entertain in a seemingly genteel English country style. Mrs Delprat found the style of entertainment at Broken Hill rather odd and excessively lavish. Mrs White’s social life, even 30 years later, was very meagre in comparison. Mrs Gunn may have mocked such standards as not appropriate for her situation, but relished any traces of them.

duty of hospitality might demonstrate Belich’s ‘recolonial bridge’. Reference to such apparatus for the Oliphant Shaw’s homestead, and also their mention in the other reports, highlight the important role material apparatus associated with dining and tea-drinking played in maintaining appropriate standards of hospitality, but also the social performance that was associated with that hospitality. These diaries and accounts are all by women, and provide their fairly singular perspectives on social practice in differing outback contexts, but through them some common threads can be traced. For OKH, we have no such written reports. However, the material remains that survive from this homestead can be used to investigate the changing nature of social behaviour here over a 70-year period, from almost the earliest European settlement in this region into the mid-twentieth century. Such a materialcultural perspective can provide detailed understandings of changing attitudes to the maintenance of social performance and Britishness at this particular homestead, and of the changing roles of this material culture in this performance. And, while OKH may be a singular context, the changing social practices over the life of this homestead that are demonstrated by the chronological changes in its material-cultural assemblage can help develop more holistic and more nuanced understandings of social life in outback Australia.

The reports of these women’s lives provide insights into the types of people with whom they interacted socially. They also provide insights into the surroundings and facilities that provided the stages and equipment for these interactions. Here, they give us these women’s perspectives on appropriate material apparatus for expected standards of hospitality and social performance, and their desire for and access to such material. From Mary Shaw’s report we get a further glimpse of these material requirements: Oliphant Shaw’s first home, at Wurrong in more settled Victoria, needed the addition of ‘spacious cupboards to hold his [English] bride’s array of china, glass, silver and linen’ (Shaw 1987: 153). In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the need for such trappings to set up a pastoral household so his new wife could fulfil her social

32

4 Collecting, Collating and Characterising the Ceramic Fineware Remainsfrom the Old Kinchega Homestead P. Allison and V. Esposito This chapter introduces the artefactual remains recorded at OKH that best document social practices and social interaction at this homestead – notably the ceramic finewares associated with eating and drinking. It introduces the criteria by which these remains have been collected and dated, then the parts of this ceramic assemblage that can be identified as tableware and teaware remains. It discusses our approaches to these tableware and teaware remains so they can be used to investigate social practices and social behaviour over the lifetime of the homestead. Where possible, it assesses these practices and this behaviour in relation to Victorian class categories of genteel or respectable performance around dining and tea-drinking, and also in relation to Australian codes of hospitality. Hayes argued (2011: 33) that there are four key indicators among ceramics for establishing middle-class gentility: matching sets; variations of vessel forms; consistency in goods for public and private use (taken here to mean when entertaining guests or by the household only); and keeping up with fashion. These indicators are important for this investigation of these ceramic tablewares and teawares.

collection of different types of glassware and of diagnostic ceramic fragments from the discrete dumping events across the entire refuse area (Figure 5). The latter were predominantly fineware sherds that either had evidence of decoration, or were significantly diagnostic base and rim sherds (e.g. with markers’ marks and sufficiently preserved to identify size and shape). This sampling method, its focus on diagnostic sherds, and the nature of the refuse deposition mean that the sherd count of the collected assemblage is likely to be closer to the actual vessel count than that at most sites. Ceramic fineware remains collected from these excavations in and immediately outside the homestead buildings, and through surface collection at the refuse site, comprise some 3,000 sherds. In the following chapters and Appendices 2–4, those from the excavations are identified with catalogue numbers commencing with ‘A/’, ‘R/’ or ‘Y/’, according to the homestead building. Those from the six 4  x 4  m squares contexts have catalogue numbers from DD/506/ to DD/511/) and those from the discrete dumping events are numbered by event – DD/513 to DD/599 and DD/800 to DD/826).6

While it is evident from the Kinchega Estate bookkeeping records that metal (enamel and tin) tablewares and teawares where used on the estate (see chapter seven), these non-ceramic vessels are not included in the analyses in chapters five and six. Such vessels rarely survive in the archaeological record. The remains of only one cup (DD/507.04/0030) and one plate (DD/508.07/0057), both of white enamel, were found and recorded at OKH, so metal vessels are not analysable here. The focus of this study on questions around social interaction and associated concepts of gentility, respectability, and hospitality also means that such vessels are less relevant here.

Preliminary analyses of all the ceramics collected were carried out between 2002 and 2005. The original classification system of these finewares provided a seemingly appropriate taxonomic consistency of fabric type to facilitate initial cataloguing by students and volunteers (Allison and Cremin 2006: 49). Following these preliminary investigations, however, it became apparent that further interrogation of this ceramic data set could be carried out to address questions concerning social practices and social interaction at OKH, and in this region more broadly. As Sarah Hayes also noted (2007: 87), the preliminary report on these ceramics remains from OKH (Allison and Cremin 2006) did not address questions of trade networks and the purchasing of goods. Neither did this report include a critical assessment of the social contexts in which these finewares would have been used. For example, assumptions about women taking tea together on the verandahs (Allison and Cremin 2006: 52, 54–55) have not fully explored questions concerning the practicalities of and opportunities for such encounters in this remote part of colonial Australia, and the important role this assemblage can play in developing more nuanced

Collecting and recording the ceramic fineware remains from OKH From the KARP fieldwork, outlined in chapter one (p. 4), excavations through the main residential buildings – Building A (the main house), Building R (a homestead worker’s ‘slab hut’), and Building Y (the gardener’s hut) – revealed some of the ceramic finewares analysed in this present study (see Figure 4). The bulk of the ceramic remains recorded by KARP and discussed here, though, are from the 2002 field season’s surface collection at DD, the homestead refuse site. These were collected through the removal of all surface artefacts from six selected 4  x 4 m squares at the site, and through more targeted surface

None of the ceramics from the test excavations in DD in 1999 (contexts 502–504) can be identified as tablewares or teawares.

6

33

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Godden (1999: 163) suggested that two types of ironstone/ white granite were made for the American market – the bluish body for rural inhabitants and a whiter body for those in the city.

understandings of changing social interaction in such contexts. Therefore, in 2010, further analyses of these ceramic finewares were carried out for a more targeted consumption-oriented approach which involved re-sorting these ceramics and more detailed recording according to functional characterisations. During these reanalyses, Virginia Esposito noted anomalies in the preliminary fabric classification system. She therefore developed a new system which employed terminology used more broadly by archaeologists of the nineteenth century (see Brooks 2005: 27) and reclassified these remains accordingly. That is, three main groups of fineware fabrics were identified in the assemblage – earthenwares (mainly refined white body,7 but also dyed-body), bone china, and hard-paste porcelain. In the northern hemisphere, archaeologists have traditionally subdivided mass-produced, essentially white-bodied, earthenware into the following categories: creamware, c.1760–1830; pearlware, c.1780–1830; whiteware, usually 1820+; and white granite, c.1845+ (see Brooks 2005: 26). Brooks (2005: 26) noted that, in Australia, creamware and pearlware ‘had largely fallen out of use by c.1830’. He also noted that white granite has been identified on only a few sites in Australia that can be dated after 1860, i.e. 20 years after this fabric’s exportation from Britain to America (Brooks 2005: 60). Brooks argued that these finds could have resulted from dumping of vessels here during the American Civil War, which predates the occupation of OKH. Most of the identified nineteenthcentury white granite tableware found in Australia to date has the ‘Berlin Swirl’ moulded pattern (Brooks 2005: 34), a pattern which was not identified at OKH.

Given the relatively late date for OKH (i.e. 1876–1955), the seeming relative uniformity of the earthenware fabrics from this site and the consumption-oriented approach of this study, such fabric distinctions are not necessarily relevant here, however. To avoid further confusion, all such white-bodied earthenwares are referred to as ‘refined white earthenware’, a term which covers such fabrics during this period. Australian twentieth-century mail order catalogues usually used the term ‘earthenware’ for advertising most crockery of these fabric types (e.g. Anthony Hordern and Sons 1907: 340), although there are exceptions. That is, the term ‘white granite’ appears in Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd 1909 catalogue (e.g. 1909: 380) and ‘semi-porcelain’ from 1914 (e.g. 1914: 367) until 1924 (e.g. 1924: 1364), both terms used to advertise some dinnerware. The term ‘ironstone’ appears in some of their catalogues to describe teaware (e.g. 1912: 373; 1924: 373). However, there is no evidence that these terms, as used in these catalogues, refer to higher-priced vessels that were likely to be higherquality earthenware. Identifying and dating the finewares Many of the ceramic finewares from OKH are of fabric and decoration types commonly recorded on nineteenth-century Australian sites, while others are archaeologically less well-known twentieth-century wares. The manufacturing dates of some of these OKH ceramic remains are identifiable through their makers’ marks, although most lack such marks. Because of the same market conditions in different parts of the British colonial world, Alasdair Brooks noted (2005: 54–55) the ‘great value’ of using parallels in North America for dating nineteenthcentury finewares from Australian contexts, although he cautioned that better understandings of the differing consumer contexts were needed. Nevertheless, Patricia Samford’s dating of British transfer-printed decoration types in North America, based on stylistic changes in the motifs (1997: 5), and Randall Moir’s chronological sequence of plate forms, based on stylistic changes in vessel profile (Moir n.d.), can provide useful chronological indicators for some of the OKH ceramics. Accordingly, we have used manufacturing marks, combined with these American chronological frameworks, to identify and date the OKH finewares. The main criteria for their identification and dating are briefly outlined below, before more detailed study of specific ware-type subset and identifiable sets.

Archaeologists, both in the northern hemisphere and in Australasia, have used the terms ‘whiteware’, ‘white granite’, or ‘white ironstone china’ variously to refer to white-bodied earthenwares, with some confusion, and much debate, concerning the precise identification of each of these fabric types in the archaeological record.8 Technological advances through the nineteenth century saw the development of stronger earthenware bodies (for references: Myers 2016: 114). Two of these white earthenware bodies were ‘stone china’, which was developed in 1805 and ‘which approximated porcelain in terms of hardness’ (Majewski and O’Brien 1987: 120), and ‘ironstone’, which was developed in 1813 (Godden 1999: 72). British manufacturers used many terms to describe these bodies, including ‘Stone China’, ‘Ironstone China’, ‘Semi-porcelain’, ‘Opaque Porcelain’ and ‘Granite ware’ (Wakefield 1962: 19). However, in the archaeological context, it is difficult to determine with the naked eye where one category ends and another begins. For example, Brooks (2005: 35) described white granite as having a blue-grey tinge to the body, while

Fabrics As outlined above, three main fabric types were identified among the OKH finewares. Precise fabric types play a less important role in the dating of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century finewares than they do for eighteenthand earlier nineteenth-century ceramics (see e.g. Brooks

7 In the preliminary classification system, these were classified as ‘creambodied’ (Allison and Cremin 2006: 49). However, the majority of the earthenwares from OKH have now been shown to be white-bodied. The broken surfaces appeared to be cream in colour because of the absorption of iron from the soil. 8 For summary of debates: Brooks 2005: 26–35; see also Crook 2008: 116.

34

Collecting, Collating and Characterising the Ceramic Fineware Remains 2005: 26–55). This is because there is less evidence for fabric change during this later period, especially among finewares of British manufacture. That said, some of the dates for three main fabric types and their distribution are useful for establishing the chronology and origins of particular vessels among the OKH assemblage, and so are summarised here.

because this area, originally Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia and part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, became Czechoslovakia in 1918. The twentieth century also saw the production of what has been termed ‘hotel ware’ or ‘restaurant ware’, which, according to Adrian Myers (2016) was first produced in the 1880s, and its peak production in the 1920s and again in the 1940s. Myers argued that ‘hotel ware’ was the common name for improved earthenwares that developed from ironstone china or ‘white granite’, here referred to as ‘refined white earthenware’, and that it was produced in Britain and also locally produced in the United States (2016: 113–14).

As with other nineteenth-century Australian sites, many of the finewares from OKH, and particularly the tablewares, were transfer-printed earthenwares. As Britain, and especially Staffordshire, dominated the world in the production of refined earthenware products throughout the nineteenth century (see Brooks 2005), most of the OKH earthenwares are likely to be British and of Staffordshire manufacture. Although utilitarian earthenwares were made in Australia from the early nineteenth century (see e.g. Kelloway and Birmingham 2010: 35), the first definite Australian-made refined earthenware tableware was made around 1900, by Bakewell Brothers, a Sydney firm (Graham 2006: 16–23). Australian government policy did not encourage early domestic potters, due to the opinion that the quality of goods imported from Britain was superior (Ford 1995: 9). No Australian earthenwares have been identified at OKH. However, we have identified Japanese earthenware, made by Nihon Koshitsu Toki Co. Ltd. The production of high-fired earthenware dinnerware was first attempted in Japan in 1905. Nihon Koshitsu Toki Co. Ltd, which became one of the leading Japanese producers, was established in 1908 (Nikko Company website 2008). Also, among the OKH finewares were numerous fragments of bone china, particularly as teawares. Developed by Josiah Spode in the late eighteenth century, to compete with Chinese porcelain, bone china was the other main British ceramic product imported into Australia throughout the occupation of OKH (see Copeland 2004: 28–37).

As noted in the following chapters, there is an apparent lack of Australian-made fine ceramics in the OKH assemblage, and a particular lack of white earthenware teawares. The production of hard-paste porcelain teawares and tablewares was not commercially successful in Australia in the nineteenth century, although plain white porcelain tea sets of Australian manufacture, while uncommon, were marketed in Melbourne by the 1920s (Graham 2006: 37). Makers’ marks Makers’ marks can indicate the pottery, an individual worker at a pottery, or a retailer, and also sometimes the precise date of manufacture of the vessel, although marks identifying a pottery were the most common type among the OKH assemblage. In addition, marks indicating the country of manufacture can be used to date the vessel, as the United States McKinley Act of 1891 required all imported goods after that date to be marked with their country of manufacture. For example, after 1891, the word ‘England’ was added to all marks on British ceramics (Godden 1991: 11), and in the twentieth century, ‘Made in England’ was also introduced. Many Japanese-made vessels were unmarked during the period 1868–90 (Stitt 1974: 143), but those made between 1891 and 1921 were marked ‘Nippon’, and those made after 1921 were marked ‘Japan’ or ‘Made in Japan’ (Stitt 1974: 176). As noted above, marks with ‘Czechoslovakia’ date after 1918. Such marks have therefore played a significant role in identifying both the origins and the dates of many of the OKH finewares.

Much of the porcelain found at OKH is not British, though. Rather, it is Japanese or Czechoslovakian. Trading treaties were drawn up between Britain and Japan in 1858 (Jackson 1992: 245), and the Japanese exported western-style ceramic items from 1868 (Kondo 1923: 212). According to Irene Stitt (1974: 149, 176), during the later nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, the availability of cheap labour in conjunction with western technology led to the Japanese production of low-priced goods of variable quality. The first Japanese porcelain dinner plate was produced by the Nihon Toki works in 1913 (Noritake website 2019). A 1922 survey of the Japanese pottery industry by the National Council of the Pottery Industry from Stoke-on-Trent, England, found that cups, saucers, jugs and ‘good quality dinner ware’ (plates and sets) were among items exported to Australia in the period 1918–21 (National Council of the Pottery Industry 1922: 18). European porcelain teawares and tablewares were also being imported into Australia during the nineteenth century, and were, at least at that stage, of high quality. According to Crook (2008: 281), they were used particularly by wealthier households. A date of 1918 provides a terminus post quem for any porcelain marked with the name Czechoslovakia, however,

However, not all marks that include the name of a country necessarily indicate its place of manufacture. One small porcelain plate fragment found at OKH (cat. no. DD/555/0012) has part of a mark with ‘No. 27 Australia’. While ‘Australia’ here could indicate that the plate was manufactured in Australia, alternatively, it could refer to the name of a pattern that was made specifically for the Australian market. For example, patterns named ‘Australia’ were made by the Scottish potteries James Jamieson & Co. and R. Cochran & Co., both of which date prior to 1860 (Kowalsky and Kowalsky 1999: 471). However, these Scottish patterns are not found on porcelain. Alternatively, some Japanese exported porcelain tea/tableware patterns were specifically designed for the Australian market (see 35

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Noritake Collectors Guild 2001–09: 1930s), so these, or other porcelain designs, could conceivably have carried the name ‘Australia’.

and Michael J. O’Brien (1987: 161) argued that vessels with ‘stand-alone banded decoration’, often referred to by archaeologists as ‘linear’, ‘lined’ or ‘band and line’, can be dated after 1860 in North America. Brooks (2005: 36) noted that this also appears to be true for Australia, and Graham Wilson observed (1999: 321) that banded decoration was very common in the Rocks in Sydney in the last decades of the nineteenth century. According to Majewski and O’Brien (1987: 147), the decalcomania or decal process was invented in France c.1850, was further developed in England by Minton, and was most popular between c.1880 and 1920. Their research revealed that decals were used on British-made ceramics prior to 1900, but were rare on American-made ceramics before that date (Majewski and O’Brien 1987: 147). According to Brooks (2005: 36–37), decals are commonly found on ceramics from twentiethcentury sites in Australia.

Other datable marks among the OKH ceramics include those with the words ‘TRADE MARK’. While the British Merchandise Marks Act was introduced in 1862 (Kowalsky and Kowalsky 1999: 577), Geoffrey A. Godden noted (1991: 11) that marks including the words ‘trade mark’ do not usually occur until after 1875. Some of the OKH marks also include the year of manufacture. Decorative motifs As with the majority of ceramic vessels from Australian sites, many of the OKH ceramics were unmarked. Nevertheless, this assemblage features some of the most common decorative types found on nineteenth-century sites, particularly transfer-printed and banded patterns. As Britain was a common source of transfer-printed wares for both America and Australia before the 1880s, chronological typologies for such decoration in North America datable prior to this date no doubt apply to comparable transferprinted vessels found in Australia and at OKH.

Thus, the dates of these different decorative types and motifs have been used to date many of the nineteenth-century earthenwares found at OKH, and some of the twentiethcentury ceramics. However, other finewares from OKH are less easy to date on the basis of their decoration alone, and consequently to allocate to different phases of occupation of this homestead. This applies particularly to finewares with gilded decoration, which is common on earthenware, bone china, and porcelain found at OKH. Gilt-edged decoration (so-called ‘white and gold’), either stand-alone or with an added pattern such as Tea Leaf (‘a clover-shaped motif ’), is common on other Australian archaeological sites (Brooks 2005: 39; see also Hayes 2014a: 44, 46). According to Dale Abrams (2001: 149), the gold Tea Leaf decoration was introduced in the 1850s, made by over 30 English potters, and continued to be circulated in Australia throughout the period that OKH was occupied.9 Relief-moulded decoration which occurs among the OKH finewares, was reportedly produced in England from the mid-nineteenth century in large quantities for export (Dieringer and Dieringer 2001: 5).

As noted above, Samford (1997) developed a chronology for the types of the motifs in British nineteenth-century transfer-printed designs found in North America, using makers’ marks as her starting point, which can be applied to the Australian context until 1890. She identified different design types (e.g. ‘Chinoiserie’) and determined the date ranges for the production of each design type, the highest production period within that range (Samford 1997: 6), and the various motifs used within each design type (Samford 1997: 17). According to Samford, the ‘Chinoiserie’ designs were produced from 1783 to 1873, with the peak production period being 1816 to 1836, and the designs included motifs such as willow trees, pagodas and oriental figures (1997: 8), which have been continuously produced until the present. Other design types for which she identified motifs included ‘exotic views’, ‘romantic’, ‘classical’, ‘floral’, ‘gothic’ and ‘Japanese’. The ‘exotic views’ design type, produced from 1793 to 1868, featured animals such as ‘camels, tigers and elephants’ and architecture such as mosques (Samford 1997: 12), while the ‘romantic’ design types, produced from 1831 to 1851, contained ‘figures in the foreground’, a water source in the middle ground and a ‘fanciful building in the background’ (Samford 1997: 13). The ‘classical’ design types, produced from 1793 to 1868, included motifs such as urns, acanthus leaves, columned temples and Greek key elements (Samford 1997: 12–13). Central ‘floral’ design types were produced between 1784 and 1869 (Samford 1997: 6). ‘Gothic’ designs, produced from 1818 to 1890, featured ‘architectural ruins’ (Samford 1997: 19), and Japanese-inspired asymmetrical designs were produced from 1864 to 1907.

Profiles For many ceramics in the British colonial world, and especially for nineteenth-century British finewares, the dominance of Staffordshire potteries and their influence over all British potteries led to a uniformity of general vessel forms and decoration across different potteries (Barker 2001: 78). David Barker also noted (2001: 79) the practice, which continues to the present day, of interfactory trading among the Staffordshire potteries and of filling orders with products from other potteries, but only if their products were identical – that is, they had the same profiles. These ‘traded’ vessels were probably unmarked, because one business was unlikely to have advertised another, or they would have been purchased undecorated and then decorated in the same way as the rest of the set. Such traded vessels are unlikely to be recognisable in the

Further observations for dating other patterns occurring in North America and also in Australia have likewise been used in this study. For example, Teresita Majewski

9 In chh. 6 and 8, all vessels with a gold Tea Leaf motif are included under the general ‘white and gold’ category.

36

Collecting, Collating and Characterising the Ceramic Fineware Remains archaeological record, but this would not impact on their relative chronology.

the OKH and then to identify their dates of manufacture and places of origin. As in the North American context, a correlation was often observed between the dates for motif types and those for plate profile types. As noted below, the dates of manufacture may be considerably different from the dates of use.

Therefore, based on such a manufacturing process and the related profiles, Moir (n.d.) developed a chronological sequence for the changes in plate profiles over the nineteenth century in North America. As Brooks noted (2005: 55), this sequence also provides a valuable tool for dating ceramics in Australia. As the main imports of finewares into North America and Australia during this period were British, the plates found on Australian archaeological sites undoubtedly follow a similar sequence of changes in profile form to those from North American sites, at least for the majority of the nineteenth century. An examination of a small sample of plates from NSW sites dating from 1860 onwards, and diagrams of plates recorded from Port Essington, Northern Territory, dating 1830–45 (Allen 2008: 66, 75), was used to test Moir’s dating method (Esposito 2014: 42–43) and confirmed that the profiles of these wares found in Australia do indeed follow a sequence similar to Moir’s, at least until the 1870s. Differences in Australian plate profiles to those of Moir would be expected after this date due to the end of Britain’s dominance of the refined earthenware market in America (Majewski and O’Brien 1987: 115), Moir’s source of investigation. From the 1880s onwards, the only similarities to Moir’s profiles appear to be a reduction in the size of the foot and the introduction of jigger marks. These marks were made by jigger machines, which were commonly used by potteries from the 1880s onwards (North Staffordshire Pottery Industry, Pottery, A–Z of Stoke-on-Trent Potters). Examples of both the small foot and jigger marks can be seen on plates from OKH, particularly those dating after 1900 (see e.g. J. & G. Meakin plate DD/506.09/0043c – Figures 52 and 53; see discussion in chapter five, p. 54), and on similarly dated plates from other NSW sites (Esposito 2014: 42).

Identifying tableware and teaware sets from the Old Kinchega Homestead As noted above, matching sets are one of the key indicators of Victorian middle-class gentility. They have been considered an ‘indicator of status and wealth’ and a requirement for ‘genteel dining’ (Hayes 2011: 36–37) which ‘not only suffused the middle class but shaped workingclass standards of female respectability’ (Young 2003: 191; see also Crook 2008: 237–39). As noted in chapter two (p. 18), the cups and saucers for the tea party attended by Ramsay-Laye at the Forest Creek gold diggings before 1861 did not match (see Russell 2010: 205). According to Gray (2013: 34–35), while matching tea sets were considered ‘obligatory’ from the mid-nineteenth century, they did not become a genteel ‘necessity’ until the 1880s, after which point specifically labelled matching sets in the trade catalogues were ‘marketed as being more upmarket’. The possession of, or at least the desire for, matching sets and their relationship with Victorian ideals of gentility have been much discussed in the archaeological literature (e.g. Fitts 1999; Yamin 2001; Hayes 2011, 2014a: esp. 25–38 and 64–69), with mismatching sets, and also a lack of plates, considered signs of poverty and unhealthy living (Owens and Jeffries 2016: 820). Once the reanalysed OKH fineware remains had been sorted into the three main ware types – earthenwares, bone china, and hard-paste porcelain – they were then sorted into sets according to their decorative patterns and/ or any identification of their manufacturers. They were then further separated into functional groups. The main functional groups of finewares identified at this site were tablewares, teawares, washing sets and children’s ceramics. As this study focuses on evidence for the social activities and interactions associated with eating and drinking, the tableware and teaware sets have been separated out from the washing sets and children’s, for further study here.11 Jugs are not included in this study because these could potentially have been parts of washing sets or for other uses (e.g. ornamental).12

Given the time period for the homestead’s occupation, Moir’s actual sequence of plate profiles (see Brooks 2005: figure 4.57) is of relatively limited use for the OKH ceramics. However, it has helped determine whether or not some of the earliest vessels recorded at OKH were likely to have been purchased as new by the homestead occupants while at this homestead. In some such cases, it has been more useful than the decoration in this respect. However, his method of analysis of vessel profiles has had further application for other OKH vessels and has also been used to ascertain whether or not individual vessels were likely to be contemporary with each other, and potentially from the same set. In particular, assessment of profiles among undecorated and simply decorated OKH teawares has been used to better understand the types of teaware sets they may have comprised.10

The children’s ceramics, including toy tea sets and those used for children’s meals, have been briefly discussed elsewhere (see Allison and Cremin 2006: 51–55). These and the washing sets will be further discussed in the full excavation publication (Allison n.d. 1). 12 A number of jug fragments were identified from OKH. Jugs were advertised in Australian catalogues (e.g. Anthony Hordern and Sons 1928: 82) as part of a ‘Cottage Assortment’ containing, among other items, breakfast, dinner and teaware, with two sizes of milk jugs included with the breakfast dishes, large and small. Jugs could also be advertised as separate items (e.g. Anthony Hordern and Sons 1907: 345), often sold in sets of three. Jug fragments from OKH (cat. nos. DD/534/0014, DD/534/0024, DD/549/0013, DD/555/0004, DD/595/0002) are of a ribbed vertical type, advertised as being sold in a set of three, and as ‘the direct descendent of the Ancient Pitcher. That which used to go to the 11

In summary, fabric types, makers’ marks, decorative motifs and vessel profiles have been variously used, and used in combination, to first sort the ceramics recovered from 10 Some of the profile drawings included in following chapters have been redrawn from rough sketches used during reanalyses in 2010.

37

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 4.1. Numbers of sherds and MNVs of tableware and teaware vessels recorded from OKH, with their approximate dates. Function

Dates

Sherds

MNV

Tablewares

pre-1890

153

87

Tablewares

post-1890

811

208

Tablewares

undated

131

24

Teawares

probably pre-1890

51

40

Teawares

post-1890

177

83

Teawares

probably post-1890

770

295

Teawares

undated

58

31

2151

768

Totals

or more different forms in the same pattern’ (Yamin 2001: 160); and ‘various forms which have the same body type and decoration’ (Worthy 1982: 348). Complementary sets have been defined as ‘at least three different vessel forms’ in similar patterns (Fitts 1999: 50). For Australian archaeological contexts, Susan Briggs (2005: 100) has used Rebecca Yamin’s definition for matching sets; Crook (2008: 237) defined matching sets as ‘individual vessels bearing the same pattern, form and maker’s mark’; and Sarah Hayes (2014a: 29) defined them as ‘two or more vessels of an identical pattern’. Hayes added that for teawares, ‘either two cups or two saucers needed to be identified as matching’. That is, she considered a cup and saucer to be one vessel for the purpose of determining sets (2014a: 34). Crook defined complementary sets as ‘vessels bearing the same pattern which may have been used as a set, but were unlikely to have been purchased as a whole’ (2008: 237). Hayes defined complementary sets as ‘giving the appearance of being sets without actually matching’ (Hayes 2014a: 29). Lauren Prossor, Susan Lawrence, Alasdair Brooks and Jane Lennon (2012: 818) defined a set as ‘two or more vessels [which] share the same decorative pattern … both “matching” sets, where the style is an exact match between vessels, and “similar”, or complementary, sets where there is variation in attributes such as shade, decoration, or ware but the vessels appear similar enough to pass as a match’. In other words, while there is general agreement on differences between matching and complementary sets, there is less agreement on the specifics of the matching decorative pattern (i.e. whether it is just the same pattern or whether a pattern has to be exactly identical in all its design details) or on the actual numbers of vessels required to identify a set in the archaeological record, matching or complementary.

Each of the tableware and teaware sets was then sorted into specific vessel sizes and types within these sets (e.g. dinner plates, teacups, bread-and-butter plates etc.), and the minimum number of vessels (MNV) calculated. Because of the apparent evidence for discrete dumping events, and the sampling procedures used, vessel fragments of the same fabric and decoration but from different contexts within the homestead refuse area were likely to be from different vessels, although this was not always the case. Where multiple fragments of the same fabric and decoration were from a single context, and could not be identified as being from different vessels, the MNV was counted as one. Conversely, sherds from different dumping events were each considered as one MNV, unless evidently from the same vessel. For example, a dish and lid are considered as two separate vessels when they are from different dump contexts, but a dish with a matching lid from the same context is considered one vessel. Among the finewares, 2,198 sherds – 44 from excavations of Buildings A, R and Y, and 2,154 from the refuse area DD – were identified as tableware and teaware remains. Among these, 1,095 sherds comprising an MNV of 319 tablewares and 1,057 sherds comprising an MNV of 450 teawares were identified and approximately dated (Table 4.1 and Appendices 2 and 3). A further 46 sherds (of refined white earthenware) comprising an MNV of 7 vessels have not been clearly identifiable as either tablewares or teawares (Appendix 4).13

In this study, we have tended to use relatively conservative definitions for sets. We have defined tableware sets, matching and complementary, as three or more vessels of the same fabric and decoration, although not necessarily three different forms, if more than five vessels are identified in a set, for reasons presented below. Matching tableware sets comprise vessels with the same maker’s mark where this exists, and exactly the same decorative design, and include more than one specific shape (e.g. dinner plates and soup plates) with the same profile. In most cases in this study, complementary sets are considered to consist of vessels with the same fabric and decorative pattern but slightly different design details or colours, as the consumer’s intention may well have been to consider them a set, even if this was not the aim of the producer or producers.

Most of the tableware and teaware fragments from OKH could be identified as parts of either matching or complementary sets. Actual definitions for matching and complementary sets from archaeological contexts vary. In North American contexts, two definitions for matching sets, used for both tableware and teaware sets, are: ‘three

We have defined teaware sets, in general, as two or more vessels of the same fabric and decoration, irrespective of whether they were cups or saucers. We have not adopted Hayes’ definition here, because ‘tête à tête’ sets would often only ever have had two cups and two saucers.14 Further possibilities for teaware sets are addressed in chapter six

well, is now put under the pump or tap’ (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1907: 345) – i.e. a water jug that could be used at the table or for washing and cooking. Fragments from porcelain Mother of Pearl lustre jugs from OKH (cat. nos. DD/540/0001, DD/548/001, DD/550/001–2, DD/822/0010) appear to be from milk/cream jugs of the type advertised in teaware, but these fragments do not match any of the OKH teawares, so could have been from ornamental jugs. As we have not been able to ascertain the uses for the jugs at OKH, they have been excluded from this study. 13 The often less diagnostic sherds were not reanalysed in 2010. They comprise porcelain teawares, either bone china or porcelain (Appendix 3b – MNV = 40), and plain earthenware vessels (Appendix 4 – MNV = 8).

14 See Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd catalogue (1909: 370), which advertises ‘tête à tête’ afternoon tea sets comprising two cups and saucers, a teapot, a sugar bowl, a cream jug and a tray. A ‘Dejeuner or Afternoon

38

Collecting, Collating and Characterising the Ceramic Fineware Remains (p. 90), as this study demonstrates that these definitions for essentially nineteenth-century sets are inappropriate for some of the twentieth-century tea sets identified at OKH. These variations in set definitions have an impact on making comparisons between the OKH sets and those at other Australian sites, as discussed in chapter eight.

used in the different documentary sources, the frequent lack of adequate description or illustration of the precise forms among such sources, and also, importantly, the potential use of the same form and size of vessel for different settings. A further complication, in terms of a standard and comprehensible terminology, is that although English potters had particular names for the vessels they made, archaeologists or collectors have sometimes developed their own terminology. Thus, there is not always a straightforward relationship between labels and vessel forms. For example, Miller noted (1980: 23–25; 1991: 11) that a large serving dish was simply called a ‘dish’ or ‘flat dish’ in the documentary sources. In the Australian sales catalogues, a large oval serving dish, of unknown size, is referred to as a ‘flat meat dish’ (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1909: 380, 1929: 79). However, archaeologists (see, e.g., Brooks 2005: 51; Crook et al. 2005: 150; Hayes 2014a: 25) and collectors (e.g. Van Buskirk 2002: 223; Neale 2005: 160–61) have often referred to these types of large, heavy, often oval dishes as ‘platters’, a vessel name which does not appear in any potter’s list (Miller 1980: 27). For consistency with comparable Australian studies, we have chosen to use the term ‘platter’ for the large, flat, thickwalled, and often oval vessels recorded at OKH. Where it is not evident whether the vessel remains at OKH are from such a serving dish or from a large table plate, we have used the term ‘plate/platter’. Based on the label in the mail order catalogue and the ample meat supply in this context, it is likely that the primary function of the oval dishes was as a ‘meat dish’.

Identifying vessels and their uses Identifying tableware and teaware sets among the OKH ceramics included identifying very specific vessel forms, sizes, and functions. And by identifying differently sized and shaped plates and their likely functions we have been able to more accurately identify the MNVs for the fragments, and therefore the numbers of vessels belonging to a particular set, and sometimes the type of set (e.g. breakfast, dinner etc.). Identifying specific vessel functions through the names for particular vessel forms and sizes is not always straightforward, as the names for different vessel forms vary between the different makers, sellers and users, as well as among collectors and also other archaeologists. Table 4.2 lists the vessel names and their sizes, used variously in: George L. Miller’s analyses of vessel price lists for English ceramics dating from 1770 to 1881 (1980; 1991); and the vessel collectors’ reference books, Miller’s Encyclopaedia of British Transfer-Printed Pottery Patterns 1790–1930 (Neale 2005), Late Victorian Flow Blue and Other Ceramic Wares (Van Buskirk 2002), covering the period from the 1880s to about 1925, and Michael Berthoud’s A Compendium of British Cups (1990), including cups dated from the 1870s to 1930s. Particularly important for this study are the mail order catalogues that were produced from the late nineteenth century by Australian department stores, such the Sydney department store Anthony Hordern and Sons, which became Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd. The reported original vessel sizes in imperial measurement have been calculated as metric measurements in Table 4.2, for concordance with the available measurements for the OKH vessel fragments, and are both included in Appendices 2–4.

The labels used for different-sized plates in these catalogues (e.g. dinner plates, supper plates and breakfast plates) are potentially more reliable for identifying the particular functions of similarly sized OKH plates, and the different types of gatherings for which they were likely to have been employed. Miller observed (1980: 27), though, that actual plates found in excavation do not have the ‘nice even measurements’ suggested by the potters’ price-fixing lists and bills of sale. William H. Van Buskirk similarly observed (2002: 220) that, in the late Victorian period, the sizes of actual plates are not always as consistent as advertised. Indeed, in different documentary sources the same named plate type could have quite different sizes. For example, for the Staffordshire potteries, a ‘twiffler’ is defined as ‘a plate about 9½ inches diameter’ (North Staffordshire Pottery Industry – Dialect, Potteries), which is rather larger than the so-named plate in Table 4.2. And, while the largest dinner plates in the nineteenth-century documentary sources were 10 inches in diameter, and in the twentiethcentury sources 10½ inches, at OKH the largest pre-1890 plates measure 10¼ inches and the largest post-1890 plates 10¾ inches. That said, most of the larger post-1890 plates found at OKH had rim diameters ranging between 9½ and 10¼ inches.

These sizes and vessel names, and the accompanying illustrations, have been used to identify many of the OKH vessels and their functions, and also to suggest the occasions (e.g. breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner, supper etc.) for which a particular set, made up of such vessels, may have been used. That said, the usefulness of these vessel labels is somewhat restricted here, not least because many of the OKH vessels survive as only very small fragments whose precise rim diameters and body shapes were not recordable.15 Other important reasons, though, as articulated above and as is evident in Table 4.2, are the inconsistencies in the labels Tea Service’ comprised only four cups and saucers (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1907: 340). 15 While many of the rim diameters were remeasured during reanalyses in 2010–11, a few were not, and so may not be accurate. However, this affects only a handful of fragments.

For this study, using the plate sizes listed in Table 4.2 as a basis, plates with a diameter of more than 9 inches have 39

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 4.2. Documented vessel functions, names and related sizes as relevant to this study. Vessel name

Size (inches)

Equivalent rim Reference diam. (mm)

meat dishes (flat oval)

10½–19½

267–495.3

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1909: 380, 1914: 1364, 1934b: 73b)

flat dish, dish (commonly oval)

10–20

254–508

Miller (1980: 23–25, 1991: 11)

platter (round and oval)

10–21

254–533.4

Van Buskirk (2002: 223)

platter (oval)

12–24

304.8–609.6

Neale (2005: 160–61)

soup tureen (round and oval, slot in lid for ladle)

not known

not known

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1904: no page no., 1914: 1364); Van Buskirk (2002: 221); Neale (2005: 99)

sauce tureen (slot in lid for ladle) not known

not known

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1914: 1364); Neale (2005: 42)

salad bowl

not known

not known

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1909: 380)

gravy boat (with handle)

not known

not known

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1909: 380, 1924: 387, 1934b: 73); Van Buskirk (2002: 225)

vegetable dish (covered)

7–9

177.8–228.6

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1909: 380, 1929: 81)

vegetable bowl (covered)

not known

not known

Van Buskirk (2002: 221)

vegetable tureen

not known

not known

Neale (2005: 41)

228.6–304.8

Van Buskirk (2002: 221)

Serving dishes

vegetable bowl (uncovered with 9–12 tab handles) Consumption dinner plate

9¾–10½

247.6–267

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1909: 380; 1914: 1364, 1369)

table plate

10

254

Miller (1980: 27, 1991: 11)

dinner plate

10

254

Neale (2005: 160)

soup plate

8–10¼

203–260.35

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1914: 1364, 1369, 1923: 367, 1929: 81); Neale (2005: 160)

soup plate (or coupe)

not known

not known

Harris, Scarfe, Ltd (1920: CG4)

coupe soup, coupe soup plate

8–10

203–54

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1923: 367, 1924: 387; 1933: 63*)

coupe soup or soup bowl

8

203

Van Buskirk (2002: 221)

entrée plate

9

229

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1928: 85)

supper plate

9

229

Miller (1980: 27, 1991: 11)

pudding (or dessert) plate

8–9

203–29

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1914: 1364, 1928: 85, 1934a: 31)

porridge plate

8½–9

215.9–229

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1914: 1364)

twiffler

8

203

Miller (1980: 27, 1991: 11)

cheese plate

7–8¾

177.8–222.3

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1914: 1364–69, 1934a: 31)

breakfast plate

7–8

178–203.2

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1914: 1369, 1928: 85)

cheese or breakfast plate

7–8

177.8–203

Neale (2005: 160)

muffin

7

178

Miller (1980: 27, 1991: 11)

side or nursery plate

6

152

Neale (2005: 160)

bread-and-butter plate

5–6½

127–65

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1934a: 31, 1938: 66)

tea plate

5

127

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1928: 85)

muffin plate

3–6

76.2–152.4

Miller (1991: 11)

oyster bowl

not known

not known

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1931: 61)

oyster bowl

6

152.4

Van Buskirk (2002: 223)

sweet dish/oatmeal bowl

not known

not known

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1933: 62, 1936: 72)

salad or cereal bowl

6

152.4

Van Buskirk (2002: 221)

fruit saucer

not known

not known

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1934a: 30)

dessert bowl or fruit saucer

5

127

Van Buskirk (2002: 221)

broth bowl

not known

not known

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1931: 61)

teacup and saucer

not known

not known

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1914: 1350, 1924: 370)

40

Collecting, Collating and Characterising the Ceramic Fineware Remains

teacup

2⅓–4½ (n = 141, average 3⅓)

58–114 average 84.3

Berthoud (1990: 215–49)

teacup

c.4

c. 101

Van Buskirk (2002: 220)

breakfast cup and saucer

not known

not known

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1914: 1350, 1924: 370)

after-dinner coffee cup and saucer

not known

not known

Anthony Hordern and Sons (1914: 1350, 1924: 370)

coffee cup

2–34⁄5 (n = 35, average 2⅔)

50–97 average 65.6

Berthoud (1990: 215–49)

coffee cup

c.2½

c.63.5

Van Buskirk (2002: 220)

saucer

c.6–6½

c.152.4–165

Van Buskirk (2002: 220–21)

* The vessel illustrated here appears to be a bowl, although called a ‘Coupe Soup Plate’. This implies that the term ‘coupe’ is used when the vessel lacks at wide brim, or marly, even though it is also called a ‘plate’ in this catalogue. The marly is the area between the shoulder (i.e. change of angle) and the rim of a vessel (see Brooks 2005: 46, fig. 4.43).

been considered dinner plates and part of dinner settings. Those with rim diameters of 9 inches or less are considered to have been supper plates and entrée plates, and also likely to have formed parts of dinner settings, as opposed to other types of settings. The specific uses of smaller 7–8inch plates are not easily distinguishable (e.g. as cheese or breakfast plates), however, and so their types of settings not usually identifiable.

‘soup bowls’, because of their wide marly, as opposed to a plain upright rim. ‘Soup plate’ is, therefore, likely to be the most appropriate term and function for such vessels (e.g. cat. no. A02XVer/123/0018 – Figures 16 and 17). That said, these labels are not used consistently among these sources, and so these differentiations are not always clear. As noted above, for example, the Harris, Scarfe, Ltd catalogue (1920– 29, CG4) refers to ‘Soup Plates (or Coupes)’. Whatever term is used, the larger round hollowware vessels from OKH, often with a marly, are likely to have been used for soup.

While teacups, breakfast cups and coffee cups are listed in these sources, their dimensions are not usually recorded, and when they are, they are not always distinct. For example, no measurements are provided for the differently priced ‘White Doulton, Chelsea shape’ breakfast cups and teacups in the Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd catalogue (1912: 373), but the accompanying illustrations demonstrate that these two types are of two distinct sizes. Among the cups dating from 1870–1930 and illustrated by Berthoud (1990: 215–49), and where sizes are provided, teacups range from 2⅓–4½ inches, and coffee cups from 2–34⁄5 inches. So, cups found at OKH with recorded diameters equivalent to 2⅓–34⁄5 inches can be considered as either teacups or coffee cups.

The remains of further circular bowls without evidence of a marly are found at OKH and can mostly be dated to the twentieth century. According to Van Buskirk (2002: 221), such bowls were made in 1-inch increments, with sizes ranging from 5 to 12 inches, 9 inches being considered the point between a serving and consumption vessel. Van Buskirk suggested that 8-inch bowls would have been coupe soups or soup bowls. Therefore, in this study, when the precise diameter and shape (i.e. oval or circular) of a hollowware vessel is not evident, it is referred to as a ‘dish/ bowl’. If it is circular and its diameter is less than 9 inches and greater than 6 inches, it is simply called a ‘bowl’. If smaller, or of unidentifiable dimensions, it is referred to generically as a ‘cup/bowl’. Many of the circular bowls from OKH have diameters ranging from 7½–8¼ inches and are therefore likely to have been brimless soup bowls or coupes, as the other bowl types (e.g. salad, cereal, breakfast) with dimensions listed in the sources are only 5 to 6 inches in diameter. For the purposes of this study, soup plates are those with a marly, while those without are referred to as soup bowls.

Among the OKH teawares and tablewares are numerous fragments which are evidently from hollowware vessels – both round and oval dishes or bowls (Brooks 2005: 50). Among these are remains of relatively deep, oval dishes, often with lids. Being oval, their dimensions are difficult to determine, but, in most cases, they would appear to have been larger than most of the circular bowls discussed below. The collectors’ encyclopaedias and the twentiethcentury sales catalogues refer to covered and uncovered large and small soup tureens, sauce tureens, as well as vegetable tureens, bowls and dishes, among which vessel types these OKH vessels were likely to have been. As the dimensions for these different types are not provided in these sources, oval hollowware dishes recorded at OKH have been called simply serving dishes.

There are also the remains of a number of teapots among the OKH ceramics, of various sizes. Teapots, and other types of hollowware vessels, sometimes have impressed numbers on their bases to indicate volume (Miller 2011: 5–7). This stems from a system of measurement used by potters in which one dozen (a potter’s dozen) equals one pint, that is 12 vessels with one-pint capacity could be made from a certain amount of clay. From that same amount of clay, 24 vessels could be made with a half-pint capacity and 36 with a third-pint capacity (Miller 2011: 4). If vessels were larger,

Among the hollowware vessels from OKH are also the remains of circular vessels with a shallow bowl, a marly, and a diameter of 10 inches or more. In the documentary sources, ‘soup plates’ tend to differ from ‘soup coupes’ or 41

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? there would be less per potter’s dozen, for example, there would be four three-pint vessels per dozen. This system was in place ‘by at least the 1760s’ and continued into the twentieth century (Miller 2011: 4), although the precise end date is not known. The Harris, Scarfe, Ltd general catalogue of 1920–29 sometimes uses the potter’s dozen volume sizes to advertise teapots. For example, ‘ROMAN KEY PATTERN’ teapots were advertised as ‘42’s, 36’s, 30’s and 24’s’ (CG13), the last being the largest, while ‘DARK BLUE WILLOW TUSCAN’ teapots were labelled ‘large, medium and small’ (Harris, Scarfe Ltd, 1920–29: CG15). Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd trade catalogues use cups sizes rather than the potter’s dozen sizes in their catalogues (e.g. Anthony Hordern and Sons 1907: 344).

There exists no precise general history of the relation of the cost and quality of various fabric and decorative types to social value and to the levels of gentility and respectability in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australia. Therefore, Crook has been concerned with developing analytical procedures for more rigorous approaches to using such artefacts excavated from archaeological sites, for ‘exploring how to measure how consumers “valued” expensive and inexpensive goods’ (2008: 255–57). Mail order trade catalogues have been important (Table 4.2) for identifying the types of vessels found at OKH and their potential uses. Crook (2005, 2008) used such catalogues, aimed initially at relatively affluent nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century middle-class consumers (see Crook 2008: 80–110), for insights into the concepts of cost, quality and value in the British colonial world, albeit from the point of view of the seller and not necessarily the buyer. She analysed the ‘cost, quality, and value’ of glassware and ceramics as documented in 55 surviving mail order catalogues and price lists from Australia, the United States and Canada, dating from 1872 to 1911. She also analysed ceramic sherds and argued that quality was generally associated with the physical characteristics of an item’s manufacture – its fabric and decoration, and the craftsmanship involved (2008: 141) – whereas cost and value can be associated with the consumer’s reasons for the purchase, retainment and use of an item (Crook 2005: 19; 2008: 26).

Despite a number of difficulties, analyses of the different forms and sizes of vessels from OKH, and their identifiable sets, are used to identify particular vessel functions and set types. Because of the difficulty of distinguishing breakfast cups and saucers from tea or coffee cups and saucers, however, most cups and saucers are discussed under teaware sets. Crook argued (2008: 233) that it might be reasonably assumed ‘that more specialised vessels such as tureen stands, ladles and gravy boats that have limited uses for other activities (in the way that a large dinner plate may double as a serving platter), are evidence of a greater commitment to more elaborate meal-taking’. Such assumptions underlie our analyses of the composition of the various sets from OKH. Indeed, it has been widely acknowledged that the more elaborate a set – i.e. the greater the range of different types of vessels within a set – the more elaborate the social activity and greater the investment in dining equipage, for predominantly socio-cultural reasons (e.g. Young 2003: 161; for further references: Crook 2008: 233).

In the trade catalogues, Crook noted that an important factor influencing the price was the extent of gilding, which could add approximately one third to the price of a vessel (2008: 141, 276, 281). She also observed that particular transfer-printed patterns were less costly than others, with some forms of decoration doubling the base price (Crook 2008: 128, 131, 141, 276). She concluded that, while customers were concerned about the colour and pattern style for transfer-printed wares, ultimately, price was more important in decisions to purchase (Crook 2008: 124). As also argued by Crook (2008: 70–72), advertisements for low-price china (e.g. Anthony Hordern and Sons 1904, ‘Cheap crockery’ sale) did not necessarily signify lowquality goods.

Approaches to identifying social value among the Old Kinchega Homestead tableware and teaware sets Another important factor, in using these tablewares and teawares to develop greater understandings of the nature of the social interactions at OKH, is the likely social value of the various teaware and tableware sets recorded there. Previous attempts have been made to ascribe artefacts from OKH with status categories such as ‘luxury’, ‘decent’ or ‘utilitarian’ as a guide to their social use or value (Allison 2003: 188). However, these rather generalised categories are not particularly useful when the finewares being investigated fit predominantly within the category of ‘decent’ (see Sassatelli 2007: 35, 41; Crook 2008: 152, 266). Also, these categories have not been related, in any critical manner, to concepts of artefact cost or quality. These are potentially important for understanding how the various ceramics may have been valued in contemporary Australian and British colonial society, and the relationship of this value to what were likely to have been the social values and social status of the OKH occupants, and to associated concepts of gentility or respectability.

To investigate quality, Crook (2008: 145–254) focused on ceramics and glassware ‘seconds’, and the likely markets for such ‘seconds’. She argued that consumers could make ‘great savings’ in the market by purchasing second-grade and faulty goods (Crook 2008: 155) and defined ‘seconds’ as ‘wares which were not necessarily intended to be made cheaply but for which sufficient errors had occurred in the manufacturing process that the product could not reasonably be offered at its intended price’ (Crook 2008: 155). Crook noted evidence for ‘common seconds’ from England being sold to North American markets between 1868 and 1872 (2008: 157). To assess the likely ‘seconds’ market in Australia, she compared some 28 separate categories of flaws in vessel shape, decoration and glaze on ceramics excavated from a number of nineteenth-century domestic sites in London and Sydney (Crook 2008: 196– 42

Collecting, Collating and Characterising the Ceramic Fineware Remains 98), at the centre and periphery of empire. She concluded that ‘no significant differences between assemblages from the two cities were detected’, countering popular notions that ‘inferior products were regularly “dumped” on the colonial markets’ or, conversely, that ‘Londoners had greater access to the seconds market than their Antipodean cousins’ (Crook 2008: 254). As discussed in chapter seven (p. 105), few such flaws were noticeable among the OKH ceramics.16

working-class association indicates that these particular patterns, found at OKH, were among the lower socially valued nineteenth-century transfer-printed wares, and can generally be considered table settings for ‘“better” sorts of working-classes’, at least in urban contexts (Crook 2008: 65; 152). It is evident from the Australian mail order catalogues analysed in chapter seven that patterned wares were generally more costly than plain wares. They were often thought to be more highly valued (see Crook 2008: 271). However, Crook observed that this could depend on the fabric and on its perceived quality (2008: 38, 131, 271–72, 281; see also Young 2003: 184–85). Also, as noted above, Crook argued that gilding could influence vessel price, and therefore gilded vessels were likely to be of higher social value than non-gilded. No gilded transfer-printed wares were recorded at OKH – either tablewares or teawares. Only one gilded dark-blue banded earthenware tableware set and some plain gilded relief-moulded plates were recorded, all datable from the early twentieth century (see chapter five, Tables 5.9–10, 5.18, 5.23). Similarly, all the datable gilded teawares from OKH are likely to date to the twentieth century (see chapter six). The majority were ‘white and gold’ teawares, but other gilded teawares included one earthenware and one porcelain teapot (DD/576/0017 – Figure 115 – and DD/516/0001 – Figure 142), two gilded decal porcelain tea sets, and an individual gilded decal porcelain cup (DD/570/0022 – Figure 150; see chapter six, Tables 6.9, 6.23, 6.26). As discussed in chapter seven (p. 95), it is also evident from the trade catalogues that gilded vessels decreased in price over the twentieth century, and that this decrease was not in line with the relative prices of patterned and plain ceramics. It cannot, therefore, be argued that all gilded vessels were always of higher value than all patterned vessels.

In her study, Crook had difficulty analysing the concept of value systematically, concluding that ‘a direct relationship between cost and value may be assumed, in many cases’ (2008: 279). However, she argued that while all three concepts – quality, value and cost – ‘were integrally connected to each other’ and associated with identity construction, social stratification and cultural affinity, they are not a ‘neat-and-tidy litmus test’ (Crook 2008: 282), and hence, as stated above, there is no precise classification that covers all relationships. The following chapters five and six discuss the different ceramic tableware and teaware sets among the OKH ceramics, respectively – their dating, various vessel forms within each set, potential uses for each set, associated social practices and, to some extent, their social significance. The last draws on Crook’s assessments of the relative pricing and value of various ceramic types to assess the likely value of particular OKH sets. In chapters seven and eight we further consider the relative prices and quality, and likely associated value, of the various tableware and teaware sets recorded at OKH. These considerations are again informed by Crook’s analyses. In chapter seven, they are also informed by further analyses carried out on pricing in Australian mail order catalogues, and in the Kinchega Estate bookkeeping records, to develop a more specific understanding of the purchasing practices associated with the tablewares and teawares recorded at OKH, and a better understanding of the likely social values of the various table settings at OKH. Because of the dates for these documentary sources, the analyses in chapter seven focus on post-1890 ceramics. As Crook noted (2008: 45), the prices set by the dealer, as recorded in the trade catalogues, and the cost to and value for the consumer can be different, and this no doubt applies to consumers in remote contexts such as at OKH.

As Crook observed, fabric could also determine perceived quality and cost, and therefore value. She argued that, during the late nineteenth century, European porcelain tableware was considered high quality, and was ‘always more expensive than bone china, which was always more costly than earthenware’ (2008: 141). That is, European porcelain tablewares were considered higher quality than ‘best’ (English) china (Crook 2008: 281). However, Crook also noted that the porcellaneous tablewares seemed less well represented in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century catalogues of the Australian stores than in the UK and North American ones (2008: 117, fig. 5.15). Perhaps in keeping with the general situation in Australia, no porcelain tableware, but also no bone china tableware, was found at OKH. All the porcelain and bone china vessels at OKH were teawares, and all the datable porcelain teawares, Japanese and Czechoslovakian, date after 1918. As noted above and in chapter seven (p. 95), Japanese porcelain was cheaper and more widely used than English bone china and European porcelain, and European porcelain became similar in price to, if not cheaper than, English bone china during the twentieth century. It cannot, therefore, be assumed that porcelain

Crook observed that, among the ceramic remains from reportedly working-class domestic sites in London and Sydney, the most common transfer-printed decoration was Willow, while the Two Temples, Albion, Asiatic Pheasant and Rhine patterns were among other common patterns (Crook 2008: 237; see also Brooks 2005: 44–45; and for mining sites: Esposito 2014: 184). Crook also identified these earthenware tableware sets as being among the less costly in the trade catalogues. This pricing and this urban During the cataloguing and analyses of these ceramics, we did not look specifically for flaws, so there could be more. Flaws were identified from photographs of the OKH sherds.

16

43

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? was always of higher value than bone china. Crook also found that, in the catalogues, shape played an important role in the advertising of ceramics for selection (2008: 131, 137), and could sometimes be more important than decoration or pattern (2008: 141). Therefore, shape can also play a part in determining value.

sets and compare the complexity of the table settings that were part of the conspicuous display associated with genteel dining (see Young 2003: 181–85). In chapter nine, using documentary evidence about the occupants of OKH and their guests, the more specific social contexts in which the OKH tablewares and teawares may have been used are investigated.

In chapter eight, comparative analyses of the types and numbers of tableware and teaware sets recorded from urban and semi-rural sites have been used to further assess the relative social status and values associated with the assemblages at OKH, against those of these less physically remote fellow Australians. Because of the dates for these comparative sites, these analyses focus on the pre-1890 ceramics at OKH. Informed by the foregoing discussions, these comparative analyses concern the key indicators among the ceramics from these various sites, which, as outlined by Hayes and noted above, were measures of gentility, and also of respectability. In particular, they assess the representativeness of matching tableware and teaware

Glass tablewares are not included in this study. As argued by Crook (2008: 177), this can be seen to accord more with standard archaeological practice rather than a more consumption-oriented approach, given that glass and ceramic were normally sold, and used, together. However, of over 60 glass vessels identified at OKH, only one stem of a crystal wine glass and some 20 to 30 glass bowls and dishes, probably dating to the 1930s, were identified as possible tablewares. The majority of these OKH glass vessels were jugs and, seemingly, everyday tumblers. Apart from the glass bowls and dishes, these are not easily datable and analysable in the same way as the ceramics.

44

5 Tableware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead P. Allison and V. Esposito As outlined in the previous chapter, through analyses of the ceramic finewares from OKH we have been able to identify and date a number of the tableware sets used at this homestead. The following discussion examines each proposed tableware set, as laid out in each accompanying table. In these tables, rim diameters are in inches, to concur with the vessel types in Table 4.2. Metric measurement concordances are found in Appendices 2a–c.

in pooled glaze, while the later nineteenth-century clear glaze has no hint of blue. The rims, marlys and shoulders of all the OKH Willow-pattern plates are similar, the marlys being concave and the shoulders angular. Their profiles (e.g. cat. no. A02Ver/56/0097 – Figure 12) are all comparable to Moir’s 1825 plate profile (see Brooks 2005: fig. 4.57), so these particular plates were probably produced in the early nineteenth century, even though the pattern is still produced today. The diameters of three of these plates identify them as probably pudding, cheese or breakfast plates. These plates do not all have exactly the same transfer-printed pattern, in that some have differently shaped scrolls within their border patterns. This variation in the decoration suggests that they were not manufactured as a matching set. On the other hand, the consistency of their profiles suggests that they may have been purchased as a single complementary set. Their early manufacturing date also suggests that they were either brought to OKH, or indeed the earlier Kinchega homestead (see chapter one, pp. 2–3 and Figure 2), as part of a pre-existing set that probably belonged to OKH’s earliest occupants, or perhaps purchased as a second-hand set, or indeed both. Here the concept of a matching, or near matching, set may have been more important than the plates’ age. It is noteworthy that the measurable plates are relatively small and that Willow-pattern teawares were also found at OKH, some datable to the early-twentieth century (see chapter six, p. 71). It is conceivable, therefore, that these plates were part of a complementary breakfast or tea set, in a very common pattern, that was consistently added to. Crook argued (2008: 237) that Willow pattern was the most ‘ubiquitous pattern of the 19th century’, comprising 25 per cent of her sample from reportedly working-class households in Sydney and London.

Earthenware All the identified tableware vessels from OKH were refined white earthenware. Pre-1890 (Appendix 2a) Among these tablewares, some six main sets were identified and, based on their decorative patterns, probably datable prior to 1890. These comprise sets of the transfer-printed patterns Willow, Albion, Asiatic Pheasant, Rhine and Cable, and a mid-blue band-and-line pattern. As mentioned in chapter four, the patterns of the first four sets – Willow, Albion, Asiatic Pheasant and Rhine – are among those that are particularly common on nineteenth-century sites in London and Sydney identified as working class. These six main sets each have an MNV ranging between 5 and 24 vessels. Willow pattern transfer print Remains of at least five plates with blue Willow pattern (see Brooks 2005: fig. 4.35) were identified (Table 5.1). These include one plate base with a double foot ring and a slight blue tinge in the pooled glaze. According to Griffin (2001: 147), early white earthenware, produced from c.1820, has a clear glaze. This glaze contains ‘a minute hint of cobalt’ which sometimes produces a bluish-green hue

Albion pattern transfer print Remains of at least six individual plates, all decorated with a light-blue Albion pattern, were recorded at OKH (Table 5.2).

Table 5.1. Tableware vessels with blue Willow pattern transfer print. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Details

Rim diam. (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

A02Ver/056/0097

plate

blue tinge in pooled glaze

8

1

1

DD/532/0002

plate

8

1

1

DD/576/0014

plate

blurred print

8

1

1

A02Xver/111/0009

plate

thicker rim

not known

1

1

A02Xver/123/0014

plate

not known

1

1

5

5

Totals

45

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 5.2. Tableware vessels with blue Albion pattern transfer print. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Details

Rim diam. (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/590/0007

plate

blue tinge in pooled glaze

8+

1

1

DD/536/0013d

plate

slight ridge on underside of rim

not known

2

1

DD/540/0009

plate

not known

1

1

DD/588/0006

plate

flat foot ring

not known

1

1

DD/811/0016

plate

not known

2

1

DD/822/0031

plate

not known

1

1

8

6

Totals Table 5.3. Tableware vessels with Asiatic Pheasant pattern transfer print. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Details

Rim diam. (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/576/0010

plate/platter

blue print

not known

1

1

DD/507.09/0065

serving dish

blue print

N/A

1

1

DD/507.09/0063

serving-dish lid

blue print

N/A

2

0

DD/507.09/0066

plate

blue print

c.10

1

1

DD/592/0015

plate, large

blue print

not known

1

1

A02XVer/123/0018

soup plate

greyish blue print

not known

1

1

7

5

Totals

The exact diameters of these plates are unknown. However, they seem larger than the above Willow-pattern plates, and so were probably dinner or supper plates. One plate (cat. no. DD/588/0006 – Figure 13) has a flat foot ring which dates it from 1845, according to Moir’s plate profile sequence. Another (cat. no. DD/590/0007 – Figure 14) has a blue tinge in a pooled glaze on the underside of the rim, which would date its manufacture prior to 1850. Thus, this set was likely to have been produced some decades prior to the earliest occupation of OKH, and also prior to that of its predecessor. The style of the Albion pattern on these plates is that illustrated by Brooks (2005: fig. 4.40) and commonly found on nineteenth-century sites in NSW and in South Australia. As with the Willow-pattern set, this Albion dinner set could either have been part of a pre-existing family possession or bought second hand. The plates are likely to be part of a complementary set, because the two rim fragments have differing profiles, one having a slight ridge on the underside (cat. no. DD/536/0013d) while the other is flat (cat. no. DD/590/007).17 As noted above, Albion pattern was among the most common nineteenthcentury patterns found on urban domestic sites considered working class.

These vessels comprised one possible platter, one serving dish and lid, at least two large dinner plates, and one soup plate with a marly (cat. no. A02XVer/123/0018, Figures 16 and 17). One dinner plate (cat. no. DD/507.09/0066) has a rounded foot ring and deep well matching Moir’s 1860s profile (partially evident in Figure 15). The soup plate has a slightly greyer transfer print than the other vessels in this set. Thus, they were not produced as a single matching dinner set, and were perhaps bought at different times or as a complementary set, either prior to the occupation of the homestead or second hand. Crook noted that Asiatic Pheasant was a fairly cheap pattern in the 1880s (Crook 2005: 19), ‘less than half the price of other Chinese and Japanese-oriented patterns’ (Crook 2008: 128), and also a common nineteenth-century pattern found on workingclass urban sites. Rhine pattern transfer print Four oval platters, one serving dish, at least 19 plates (dinner plates and two sizes of pudding, cheese or breakfast plates) and two further hollowware vessels (possibly serving dishes or bowls) with a grey transfer-printed Rhine pattern (Brooks 2005: figs 4.32–34 and 38) were identified at OKH (Table 5.4).

Asiatic Pheasant pattern transfer print Fragments from at least five vessels recorded at OKH (Table 5.3) were decorated with another transfer pattern, light-blue Asiatic Pheasant pattern (Brooks 2005: fig. 4.36).

17

Two of the dinner plates (cat. nos. DD/534/0011a and b – Figure 18) have makers’ marks. One (cat. no. DD/534/0011b – Figure 19) has the mark ‘BROWNFIELD & SONS (in banner)/ TRADE MARK (across twin globes)/ (pattern name)’, a mark used by Brownfield & Sons exclusively for export wares (Peake 2004: 50). The other (cat. no. DD/534/0011a – Figure 20) has an impressed date stamp,

These profiles were observed during analysis. Drawings are not available.

46

Tableware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead Table 5.4. Tableware vessels with grey Rhine pattern transfer print. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Details

Rim diam. (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/556/0008

platter

47 mm rim to shoulder

N/A

2

1

DD/531/0002

platter

35 mm rim to shoulder

N/A

1

1

35 mm rim to shoulder

DD/561/0001

platter

N/A

1

1

DD/555/0010

platter

N/A

1

1

DD/556/0015

platter

N/A

5

0

DD/507.09/0064

serving dish

DD/507.01/0001a

plate

bluish grey transfer print; people in boats different from those on other plates

DD/507.05/0033

plate

people in boats different from those on other plates

8

1

1

10

2

1

10

1

1

DD/529/0001

plate

10

1

1

DD/533/0008

plate

10

1

1

10

10

2

DD/534/0011a and b plate

‘BROWNFIELD & SONS’ mark; people in boats different from those on DD/507.01.001a and DD/507.05/0033

DD/534/0020

plate

10

2

1

DD/534/0023

plate

10

1

0

DD/556/0022

plate

10

1

1

DD/589/0010a and b plate

10

7

1

DD/599/0005

plate

boatman similar to that on DD/534/0011a 10

3

1

DD/801/0005

plate

10

4

1

DD/809/0007

plate

10

2

1

DD/555/0015

plate

8

1

1

DD/556/0021

plate

8

1

1

DD/592/0012

plate

8

1

1

DD/507.01/0001b

plate

7

1

1

DD/507.07/0060

plate

7

1

0

DD/813/0007

plate

not known

1

1

DD/587/0001

plate

not known

2

1

DD/589/0011

plate

not known

1

0

DD/546/0005

plate

not known

4

1

DD/589/0014

dish/bowl

not known

1

1

DD/801/0017

dish/bowl

not known

1

1

61

26

Totals

in the form month/ year, which was used by the same manufacturer. The year date is not very legible but could be ‘12/ 87’, indicating December 1887. Brownfield was one of the six largest ceramic manufacturers in Staffordshire in the second half of the nineteenth century (Peake 2004: 49). The date stamp concurs with Godden’s dating of the ‘twin globes’ mark as 1871–91 (1991: 110). However, the profiles of these two plates (e.g. cat. no. DD/534/0011a – Figure 21) do not match Moir’s profiles for this period. The plate foot is similar to that of Moir’s 1885 profile, as is the tapered marly. However, the shoulders of both of these Brownfield plates are distinct on both sides, whereas Moir’s plate profile lacks shoulder definition on the underside. This example serves to demonstrate that post-1880s British-

made plate profiles from Australian sites do not conform to Moir’s American profiles, because the latter were locally made after that date. Among these Rhine-pattern plates there were at least three variations of the central scene in the plate wells, notably of the boats and the people in them. One central scene has two boats, each with three people (cat. no. DD/507.01/0001a – Figure 22). Here, the front boat seems to contain an oarsman (with a white sleeve and collar), two women (one with a head scarf and one with a brimmed hat) and two baskets, while the rear boat seems to have a man and two boys, all standing and wearing brimmed hats. Two other plates (cat. nos. DD/534/0011b – Figure 47

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 5.5. Tableware vessels with purple Cable pattern transfer print. Cat. nos.

Vessel

DD/556/0016

Details

Rim diam. (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

serving dish

not known

1

1

DD/814/0004

serving dish

not known

1

1

DD/534/0013

plate

slightly thinner rim

8

1

1

DD/534/0022

plate

slightly lighter purple print

8

1

1

DD/556/0017

plate

8

4

1

DD/556/0029

plate

8

1

0

DD/557/0002

plate

8

5

1

14

6

Totals

18 – and DD/599/0005 – Figure 23) have similar types of boats to the first plate, if more cursorily executed in the original drawing for the transfer print, but the oarsman has a dark sleeve and no collar, and all the other identifiable people in the boats have different bodies, heads and hats. A fourth plate (cat. no. DD/507.05/0033 – Figure 24) has two very differently shaped boats from these three plates. These two boats seem to have four seated individuals, including the oarsman, all with brimmed hats. The grey colour of the decoration on these plates also differs among them. Thus, while the overall impression is of a matching Rhine-pattern dinner set, with at least 10 large plates, it is evident that all these vessels were not produced, and possibly not purchased, as a single dinner set. Rather, they together comprise a complementary set, of which some of the vessels may have been replacements for those in an original matching set. Rhine pattern is one of the cheaper patterns in 1880 (Crook 2005: 19), being less than half the price of other patterns (Crook 2008: 128), and again a common nineteenth-century pattern found on workingclass urban domestic sites.

NSW (Ward 2005: 10; Brooks 2007: 185; Esposito 2014: 184) and Victoria (Hayes 2014b: 39). Two Staffordshire makers’ marks, dating c.1863–91 and 1887+ respectively, have been identified on Cable-patterned sherds from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music site (Ward 2002: 3). Ward regarded this as a post-1860 pattern. Mid-blue band-and-line pattern Among the tableware remains from OKH, seven different vessels decorated with a mid-blue band-and-line pattern around both sides of the rim, and no further decoration, were identified (Table 5.6). They included two oval platters, an oval serving dish and four plates, three of which have dimensions, respectively, of a dinner plate, an entrée or supper plate, and possibly a pudding or cheese plate. The dinner plate (DD/507.05/0034a – Figure 25) has the same profile as the Brownfield-marked Rhine-pattern plates (e.g. cat. no DD/534/0011a – Figure 21), suggesting it dates to the 1880s/90s. It also has a partial impressed mark ‘S. D.’ on the base. However, it has not been possible to identify the maker from this mark. These vessels cannot be identified with any certainty as a matching set purchased as new, but

Cable pattern transfer print A minimum of six vessels decorated with a purple Cable transfer print were recovered from OKH (Table 5.5).

Table 5.6. Tableware vessels with mid-blue band-and-line pattern.

These comprised two serving dishes and four pudding, cheese or breakfast plates (e.g. cat. no. DD/556/0029 – Figure 26). These Cable plates have a similar profile (e.g. cat. no. DD/556/0029 – Figure 27) to the Brownfield-marked Rhine-pattern plates (e.g. cat. no DD/534/0011a – Figure 21), supporting Rowan Ward’s dating for this pattern, as below. The pattern on one of the plates is of a slightly lighter colour than that on the others, and another plate has a thinner rim than the rest. These variations suggest that these plates were not from a single original matching set but, again, were possibly part of a complementary set. The small size of all the plates suggests they may not have formed a standard dinner set, but perhaps a lunch or breakfast set. This Cable pattern is relatively common on Australian sites and has been found, for example, in Port Adelaide (Briggs 2005:161), in Sydney (Ward 2002: 3, 6; Casey 2005: 102), as well as on semi-rural sites in

Cat. nos.

Vessel

Rim No. diam. sherds (inches)

MNV

DD/507.01/0003

platter

N/A

1

1

DD/592/0013

platter

N/A

1

1

DD/553/0002

serving dish

N/A

1

1

DD/507.05/0034a

plate

10¼

1

1

DD/507.05/0034b

plate

9

1

1

DD/582/0006

plate

8¾

1

1

A02XVer/111/0002

plate

not known

1

1

7

7

Totals

48

Tableware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead would certainly have comprised a complementary set, and very probably a dinner set. Band-and-line patterns are relatively common on Australian sites, and were reportedly ‘the cheapest of the decorated wares in the last quarter of the nineteenth century’ (Wilson 1999: 321).

This assemblage of likely pre-1890 tablewares indicates that over some 15 years the occupants of this homestead had at least six main tableware sets. Of these, four – Asiatic Pheasant, Rhine, Cable and blue band-and-line patterns – have multiple vessels and vessel types that would identify them as dinner sets, although all the Cable plates are notably small for dinner plates and may have constituted a breakfast set. The two other main sets – Willow and Albion pattern – comprise plates only. The former Willow-pattern plates also seem rather small for standard dinner plates and may have constituted part of a set for other occasions, such as breakfast, as seems likely for the post-1890 and undated teawares in this pattern (see chapter six, p. 71 and p. 88). The sizes of the Albion-pattern plates imply these were part of a dinner set. These two sets may have been parts of pre-existing tableware sets, purchased prior to any occupation of this homestead. Two further potential sets with, respectively, blue and brown transfer-printed patterns, consisting of serving dishes only, may have been purchased as such, to complement these other sets. All these sets are of patterns that were relatively common in Australia, and seemingly relatively inexpensive, and for which replacements were likely to have been relatively easily purchased. It is unclear whether the other oddments in Table 5.7 were indeed parts of further, originally different, sets, or whether missing vessels in the main sets were made up with vessels in other patterns, with resulting tableware sets that were not well matched.

Other transfer-printed patterns Among the tablewares from OKH, a further 32 refined white earthenware vessels in at least 19 different transferprinted patterns were identified that potentially date prior to 1890 (Table 5.7). These tableware vessels could conceivably have comprised parts of additional sets, but do not occur in adequate numbers and types for our set definition. For example, two transfer-printed patterns – a blue ‘beads, rosette and ribbon band, festooning beads and leaves’ pattern and a brown ‘vine and daisy pattern in fence/trellis’ pattern – have adequate number of vessels recorded at OKH, but not numbers of vessel types. That is, remains of only two serving dishes and two lids with the ‘beads, rosette and ribbon band’ pattern (cat. no. A02Ver/056/0098 – Figures 28 and 29) were found, at different locations. While there are adequate vessel numbers with this pattern to be classified as a set, there is only one vessel type and its lid. Also, the name and date of this pattern have not been identified, so, although these vessels have been included here, they could possibly date post-1890. Similarly, remains of one serving dish and probably two lids, with an unidentified brown transfer-printed pattern featuring a ‘vine and daisy pattern in a fence/trellis’ pattern, were found at OKH (e.g. cat. no. DD/549/0009 – Figure 30). Like the previous pattern, these remains may indicate three different vessels but, again, comprise only serving dishes and lids, and their date is uncertain. It is conceivable that such serving dishes may have complemented some of the main transfer-printed sets.

1890–1955 (Appendices 2b–c) Among the remaining tablewares from OKH, essentially four main sets can be identified that can be dated after 1890. These are all earthenware. Three are decorated, respectively, with a transfer print, a dark blue-banded decoration, and a relief-moulded decoration, while a fourth set is plain but polygonal in shape. Cuba pattern transfer print

Notable among the other transfer-printed tableware vessels are a number of plates that are likely to date to the early to mid-nineteenth century. These include fragments from two pudding, cheese or breakfast plates with a paleblue Two Temples pattern (e.g. cat. no. DD/574/0004 – Figure 31; for pattern type, Brooks 2005: fig. 4.37). Such Chinese-inspired patterns were still produced in the later nineteenth century but, according to Samford (1997: 6, 8), their popularity peaked before the mid-century. Vessel fragments with an unidentified asymmetrical brown transfer print (e.g. cat. no. DD/548/0015 – Figure 34) may date after 1890. Also included in Table 5.7 are five small transfer-printed plates, or possibly saucers, that could conceivably have been teawares. The considerable number of different patterns among these vessels could indicate that they were purchased as oddments, perhaps to complement the main sets, as is argued above for serving dishes. This might apply particularly to platters. The older plates could have been remnants of family sets, and/or purchased second hand.

Remains of some six vessels recorded at OKH were decorated with a blue-green floral transfer pattern identifiable as Cuba (Table 5.8). These comprised three platters, at least one plate of indeterminate size, and at least two soup plates with marlys (e.g. cat. no. DD/509.15/0146 – Figure 32). One soup plate (cat. no. DD/509.12/0114) has a base mark, ‘POUNTNEY & CO LD/ CUBA’ in an oval garter, printed in the same bluegreen colour (Figure 33). This Cuba pattern can be dated 1889–1969 (Godden 1991: 507). On these particular vessels, the pattern is asymmetrical, which, according to Samford (1997: 6, 19), was inspired by Japanese-style designs and dates them to the later nineteenth century. Because of their apparent uniformity of colour and pattern and range of different vessel types, these vessels were likely to have been purchased together as a new dinner set for which no replacements were purchased. Not only was this the only new matching set purchased for OKH to date; it was also of a seemingly relatively rare pattern in Australia which, 49

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 5.7. Tableware vessels with other probable nineteenth-century patterns. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Dec. type and colour

DD/507.05/0032

platter

grey transfer print

DD/534/0006

Rim diam. No. (inches) sherds

MNV

N/A

1

1

platter

band of circles at rim, with band of white brown transfer print scrolls and white/brown stylised leaves below; N/A rope with rosettes and dots at shoulder

8

1

DD/556/0018

platter

band of circles at rim, with band of white brown transfer print scrolls and white/brown stylised leaves below; N/A rope with rosettes and dots at shoulder

1

1

DD/534/0019

serving dish

blue transfer print

beads, rosette and ribbon band, festooning beads and leaves

N/A

1

1

DD/556/0014

serving dish

blue transfer print

beads, rosette and ribbon band, festooning beads and leaves

N/A

2

1

A02Ver/056/0098

serving-dish lid

blue transfer print

beads, rosette and ribbon band, festooning beads and leaves; print mismatched*

N/A

1

1

DD/589/0012

serving-dish lid

blue transfer print

beads, rosette and ribbon band, festooning beads and leaves

N/A

2

1

A02XVer/123/0023

bowl/ serving blue transfer print dish

not identified

N/A

1

1

DD/589/0009

dish/bowl

blue transfer print

landscape pattern

N/A

1

1

DD/546/0001

serving dish

brown transfer print vine and daisy pattern in fence/trellis

N/A

1

1

DD/536/0010

serving-dish lid

brown transfer print vine and daisy pattern in fence/trellis

N/A

4

1

DD/549/0009

serving-dish lid

brown transfer print vine and daisy pattern in fence/trellis

N/A

1

1

DD/552/0009

serving dish? brown transfer print asymmetrical vegetal pattern

N/A

2

1

DD/548/0009

serving-dish lid?

brown transfer print asymmetrical vegetal pattern

N/A

1

1

DD/548/0015

serving-dish lid?

brown transfer print asymmetrical vegetal pattern

N/A

1

0

DD/573/0018

oval serving dish

black transfer print

white arrowheads in black band

N/A

1

1

DD/574/0008

oval serving dish

black transfer print

white arrowheads in black band

N/A

3

1

DD/590/0009

serving dish? black transfer print

foliate moulding outlined in black

N/A

1

1

DD/535/0023

serving-dish lid?

blue transfer print

flow blue floral

N/A

1

1

DD/589/0007

serving-dish lid

green transfer print

white foliated scrolls on green linear and stipple background

N/A

1

1

DD/525/0010

plate

green banded

10

3

1

DD/589/0004

plate

blue transfer print

Two Temples pattern

8

1

1

DD/574/0004

plate

blue transfer print

Two Temples pattern

8

1

1

landscape pattern

not known

1

1

DD/563/0009

plate

blue transfer print

Pattern interlacing foliated white bands on grey background at rim, with flowers and buds between the white bands

A02XVer/123/0013 plate

green transfer print vegetal pattern

not known 1

1

A02Ver/34/0085

brown transfer print Rhine pattern

not known 2

1

white beads with purple lacy band at rim, and not known 1 vegetal pattern below

1

handle with white bands on brown linear background

not known 1

1

not known 1

1

plate

A02XVer/113/0011 bowl

purple transfer print

DD/589/0003

serving dish? brown transfer print

A02XVer/87/0024

small plate/ saucer

green transfer print floral pattern with small flowers

50

Tableware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead DD/820/0037

small plate/ saucer

green transfer print floral pattern with small flowers

not known 1

1

DD/582/0005

small plate

brown transfer print scalloped rim with vegetal decoration

not known 1

1

DD/586/0020

small plate

brown transfer print scalloped rim with vegetal decoration

not known 1

1

DD/521/0002

small plate/ saucer

brown transfer print

not known 1

1

linked open rectangles between thin brown bands at rim, geometric pattern below

Totals

51

32

* For discussion on flaws see ch. 7, p. 105).

were manufactured by two different English potteries – the Empire Porcelain Company, in Stoke, and J. & G. Meakin, in Hanley.

Table 5.8. Cuba pattern transfer-printed tableware set. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Rim diam. (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/509.01/0001

platter

N/A

2

1

DD/509.05/0038

platter

N/A

3

0

DD/509.09/0087

platter

N/A

1

0

DD/593/0012

platter

N/A

3

1

DD/594/0006

platter

N/A

1

1

DD/509.13/0133

plate?

not known

2

1

DD/509.07/0065

plate/dish

not known

1

0

DD/509.03/0011

soup plate

10

4

1

DD/509.04/0027

soup plate

10

1

0

DD/509.06/0050

soup plate

10

2

0

DD/509.15/0146

soup plate

10

2

0

DD/563/0008

soup plate

10

1

1

DD/509.08/0077

soup plate

not known

1

0

DD/509.10/0100

soup plate

not known

2

0

DD/509.11/0105

soup plate

not known

1

0

DD/509.12/0114

soup plate

not known

1

0

DD/509.12/0115

soup plate

not known

1

0

29

6

Totals

Remains of at least seven large plates, probably dinner plates, a gravy boat (e.g. cat. no. DD/573/0017d – Figure 35), a soup plate (cat. no. DD/535/0014 – Figure 36), and another plate of unknown size have evidence of this decoration and of base marks printed in dark green that identify them as Empire ware, made by the Empire Porcelain Company. During the 1920s and 1930s, this company used at least four different marks more or less concurrently (North Staffordshire Pottery Industry, Pottery, A–Z of Stoke-on-Trent Potters), two of which were identified on the OKH vessels. One is ‘“EMPIRE WARE”/ E. P. Co./ (crown)/ STOKE-ON-TRENT/ (month of manufacture) ENGLAND (year of manufacture)’ (e.g. cat. no. DD/573/0016 – Figure 37), which can be dated c.1925–39. The other variation lacks ‘E. P. Co.’ (e.g. cat. no. DD/510.13/0085b – Figure 39), and can be dated c.1928–39. The numbers 9 and 28 on either side of ‘ENGLAND’ in the mark on the gravy boat fragment (cat. no. DD/573/00016 – Figure 39) provide a more precise date of manufacture for this vessel, of September 1928). The base sherd of one of the plates (cat. no. DD/510.11/0075 – Figure 40) has a date of January 193(?), identified by the numbers 1 and 3 on either side of ‘ENGLAND’. Each plate has a tapered rim and small foot (e.g. cat. nos. DD/537/0009 – Figure 41 – and DD/510.07/0050 – Figure 42). However, some of the bases’ profiles differ. For example, cat. nos. DD/510.13/0085b (Figure 38) and DD/510.10/0067a–g (Figure 43) are slightly different from each other, as the former has a jigger mark inside the foot ring, while the latter has no such mark. These different marks and profiles suggest that these vessels were not all produced, and possibly not purchased, as part of an original matching dinner set, and that they comprised a complementary set for which replacements were likely to have been purchased at different stages. Remains of one dark blue-banded and gilded cheese or breakfast plate (cat. no. DD/817/0003 – Figures 44 and 45), which is smaller than the Empire ware plates, has the mark, ‘… SOL 391413/ (rising sun)/ J & G MEAKIN/ ENGLAND’, which registered wares produced by J. & G. Meakin between 1912 and 1963 (North Staffordshire Pottery Industry, Pottery, A–Z of Stoke-on-Trent Potters). The similarity of the decoration of this vessel to the Empire ware vessels but the different maker supports the concept of a complementary dinner set of this dark blue-banded tableware, which may have been added to at different

to our knowledge, has not been identified archaeologically in this country. While this pattern, with this mark, was being produced until 1969, long after OKH was occupied, the number of vessels broken possibly indicates it was in use for a substantial period at OKH, with no evidence for replacements, so it was probably purchased in the late nineteenth century or early twentieth century, rather than in the mid-twentieth century. Dark blue-banded decoration A number of vessels from OKH were decorated with a wide, dark-blue band at the rim, some with evidence for a gold line either side of this band (Table 5.9). Some of these vessels have makers’ marks which indicate that they 51

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 5.9. Dark blue-banded tablewares marked Empire ware or Meakin Cat. nos.

Vessel

Maker’s mark

Size (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/573/0016

gravy boat

Empire ware

N/A

1

1

DD/573/0017d

gravy boat

Empire ware

N/A

1

0

DD/510.07/0049

plate

Empire ware

9–9½

3

1

DD/510.10/0067a–g

plate

Empire ware

9–9½

7

1

DD/510.10/0067h–i

plate

Empire ware

9–9½

2

1

DD/510.10/0067j–l

plate

Empire ware

9–9½

3

0

DD/510.10/0067m

plate

Empire ware

9–9½

1

1

DD/510.11/0075

plate

Empire ware

9–9½

4

1

DD/510.13/0085b

plate

Empire ware

9–9½

4

1

DD/537/0009

plate

Empire ware

9–9½

7

1

DD/535/0014

soup plate

Empire ware

8–8¼

1

1

DD/552/0008

plate?

Empire ware

not known

1

1

DD/817/0003

plate

Meakin

7

6

1

41

11

Totals

times when purchasing the same pattern was important, irrespective of the different maker.

and the Empire ware plates (e.g. cat. nos. DD/510.07/0050 and DD/573/0017a, b and c – Figures 42 and 46), in that they have a small foot. While no decoration is evident on either base, it is possible that they were from the same set as those with blue-banded decoration (Tables 5.9–10). Thus, the remains of some 42 vessels have, variously, the same type of decoration, similar marks and similar profiles, and comprise a coherent range of vessel types, suggesting that they were part of the same dinner set. The evidence for at least two different manufacturers indicates they comprised a complementary set. Vessels with the Meakin mark could have been purchased any time after 1912, while those the Empire ware mark would have been purchased after the mid-1920s. This date range, the number of vessels belonging to this set, and the different marks suggest it may have been in use for some time, possibly with replacements being purchased by different OKH inhabitants. Lassetters’ General Catalogue (1913: 363) advertised ‘THE “FEDERAL” PATTERN DINNER SERVICE’, featuring a ‘Dark blue border. Every piece giltedged’, which could potentially be this set. In Lassetters’ 1906 catalogue, the ‘Federation Pattern’ is listed with ‘dinner services of little money’ (Lassetters’ 1906: 291).

Fragments from a further 29 vessels with dark bluebanded decoration, and often evidence of gilding, were also identified, but none of these had evidence of markers’ marks (Table 5.10). Among these vessels were 13 plates with the same profile and decoration as those with the Empire Porcelain Company mark (e.g. cat. nos. DD/510.07/0050 and DD/573/0017a, b and c – Figures 42 and 46). They comprise at least four different-sized plates, the largest of which were similar in size to the marked Empire plates and were probably either dinner or entrée plates. One cheese, breakfast or muffin plate (cat. no. DD/552/0006) had the same profile as the marked Meakin plate (cat. no. DD/817/0003 – Figure 45). Five bowls among these vessels (e.g. cat. no. DD/578/0005 – Figures 47 and 48) have the same profile as cat. no. DD/580/0011, which has a J. & G. Meakin mark (see Table 5.11). Further, unmarked, remains of vessels with dark bluebanded and often gilded decoration include the remains of some six serving dishes of different sizes, two 9-inch plates (e.g. cat. no. DD/570/0020 – Figures 49–50), possibly one other plate, and one 8-inch bowl, possibly a soup bowl. The plates and bowl do not appear to have similar profiles to either the Empire ware or the Meakin vessels (e.g. compare cat. no. DD/537/0009 – Figure 41 – with cat. no. DD/570/0020 – Figure 50). However, they are comparable in size to other vessels of this decorative type.

Relief-moulded decoration Twelve main relief-moulded patterns were identified among the OKH tablewares. Three of these have markers’ marks – a ‘Meakin’ feathered pattern; a ‘Wood & Sons’ fan pattern and a ‘Nippon Koshitsu Toki Co.’ shell pattern – and occur in sufficiently considerable quantities to be considered sets, even if not all have an identifiable range of more than three vessel types.

Remains of two further bases, from possibly a plate and a bowl (Table 5.11), have evidence of the same Meakin mark as the 7-inch plate, cat. no. DD/817/0003 (see Figure 44).

Feathered pattern – J. & G. Meakin

The profiles of these two bases are also similar to that of this Meakin plate (i.e. cat. no. DD/817/0003 – Figure 45)

One hundred and twenty fragments have the remains of a relief pattern consisting of a cluster of feathered lines 52

Tableware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead Table 5.10. Dark blue–banded tablewares without evidence of makers’ marks. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Maker

Size (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/510.07/0050

plate

Empire ware?

9½

8

1

DD/538/0005

plate

Empire ware?

9½

1

1

DD/573/0017a, b and c

plate

Empire ware?

9½

3

1

DD/576/0023

plate

Empire ware?

9½

1

1

DD/528/0007

plate, thicker

Empire ware?

>9

1

1

DD/570/0021a and b

plate

Empire ware?

8¾–9½

2

1

DD/510.14/0091

plate

Empire ware?

8¾–9½

8

1

DD/510.09/0064a and b

plate

Empire ware?

8¾–9½

2

0

DD/510.06/0045

plate

Empire ware?

8¾

1

1

DD/510.13/0085a

plate

Empire ware?

8¾

9

0

DD/515/0001

plate

Empire ware?

8

2

1

DD/817/0010

plate

Empire ware?

7

1

1

DD/552/0007

plate

Empire ware?

6¾

7

1

DD/507.16/0147

plate

Empire ware?

6¼

3

1

DD/506.04/0030

plate

Empire ware?

6

1

1

DD/552/0006

plate

Meakin?

7

2

1

DD/816/0004

bowl

Meakin?

8

4

1

DD/510.09/0063

bowl

Meakin?

8

2

1

DD/514/0005

bowl

Meakin?

7½

4

1

DD/535/0025

bowl

Meakin?

7½

4

1

DD/578/0005

bowl

Meakin?

7½

8

1

DD/515/0003

serving dish

unknown

9

4

1

DD/576/0019

serving dish

unknown

8¾

3

1

DD/573/0015

serving dish

unknown

8¼

1

1

DD/510.09/0064c and d

serving dish

unknown

6¾

2

1

DD/510.13/0086

serving dish

unknown

6¾

4

1

DD/570/0021c

serving dish

unknown

6¼

1

1

DD/570/0020

plate

unknown

9

6

1

DD/579/0015a, b and c

plate

unknown

9

5

1

AWVer/044/0208

plate

unknown

not known

1

1

DD/510.14/0096

plate

unknown

not known

1

0

DD/579/0017

bowl

unknown

8

5

1

107

29

Totals Table 5.11. Bases marked Meakin without evidence of decoration. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Maker’s mark

Size

No. sherds

MNV

DD/816/0003

plate?

J & G Meakin

not known

4

1

DD/552/0010

plate?

J & G Meakin

not known

2

0

DD/580/0011

bowl?

J & G Meakin

not known

1

1

7

2

Totals

perpendicular to the rim, which are joined by a line parallel to the scalloped rim (e.g. cat. no. DD/577/0006b – Figure 51; Table 5.12).

large plate, possibly an entrée, pudding or cheese plate; two soup plates; and two large bowls, probably soup bowls. Three of the dinner plates have remains of Meakin marks, as do some of the less easily identifiable vessels that may also have been plates. The fragment, cat. no. DD/506.09/0043c, has the mark ‘IRONSTONE CHINA/ REGD SOL 391413/

These fragments constitute an MNV of 23 vessels comprising at least 16 10¼-inch dinner plates; one further 53

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 5.12. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims with a relief-moulded feather pattern, some with Meakin mark. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Maker’s Mark

Size (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/506.09/0043c, d and e

plate

Meakin

10¼

4

1

DD/506.05/0043a

plate

none

10¼

1

0

DD/506.12/0043m

plate

none

10¼

1

0

DD/533/0006

plate

none

10¼

1

1

DD/535/0017

plate

none

10¼

2

1

DD/543/0019b

plate

none

10¼

4

1

DD/544/0016b, c

plate

none

10¼

7

1

DD/563/0014

plate

none

10¼

2

1

DD/566/0034

plate

none

10¼

3

1

DD/570/0015

plate

none

10¼

1

1

DD/576/033

plate

none

10¼

1

1

DD/576/034

plate

none

10¼

2

0

DD/577/0006a

plate

none

10¼

27

1

DD/579/0019a

plate

none

10¼

5

1

DD/596/0014

plate

none

10¼

5

1

DD/817/0007

plate

none

10¼

1

1

DD/818/0010

plate

none

10¼

4

1

DD/820/0023a

plate

none

10¼

6

1

DD/822/0006a

plate

none

10¼

1

1

DD/819/0001

plate

none

8¾

1

1

DD/557/0006

plate

Meakin

not known

26

2

DD/577/0006b

soup plate

none

10

1

1

DD/822/0004

soup plate

none

10

1

1

DD/514/0002

bowl

none

8¾

3

1

DD/579/0019b

bowl

none

8¾

4

1

DD/544/0012a

base only

Meakin

not known

2

0

DD/544/0015

base only

Meakin

not known

1

0

DD/576/0036

base only

Meakin

not known

1

0

DD/579/0023

base only

Meakin

not known

1

0

DD/579/0024

base only

Meakin

not known

1

0

120

23

Totals

(rising sun face)/ J & G MEAKIN/ ENGLAND’ (Figure 52), which can be dated 1912 or later. Thus, these vessels would appear to have formed a dinner set, with a limited range of vessel types and the vast majority being large, samesized dinner plates. Given the similar plate profiles, jigger marks (see cat. no. DD/506.09/0043c – Figure 53) and sizes among many of these vessels, it is conceivable that they were produced and bought as an original matching set.

These vessels included the remains of three serving dishes, one 10¼-inch dinner plate and some 21 9½-inch dinner plates, and three further plates of unknown sizes. Some have evidence of a thin gold band at the rim. One of the plates (cat. no. DD/824/0001 – Figures 55 and 56) has a partially worn green-printed mark ‘(crown)/ WOOD & SONS (in banner)/ BURSLEM/ ENGLAND’, which identifies the maker of this pattern and dates these vessels from 1910 (Godden 1991: 689). This particular plate also has an impressed mark, ‘WS 1023’, which may record the actual date of manufacture, i.e. October 1923. The profile of cat. no. DD/819/0002 (Figure 54) comprised a rounded foot with a jigger mark on the base just inside, made by machinery during the plate-making process. The quantity of vessels with this decoration certainly concurs with our definition of a set, although possibly not the range of vessel types. While the majority are again large, same-sized dinner

Fan-and-Scallop pattern – Wood and Sons Ltd Another 137 fragments from some 28 vessels recorded from OKH are decorated with a series of relief-moulded fans separated by raised scallops, following the shape of the scalloped rim (e.g. cat. no. DD/819/0002 – Figure 54; Table 5.13).

54

Tableware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead Table 5.13. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims with a relief-moulded fan-and-scallop pattern decoration, some with Woods and Sons Ltd mark. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Maker’s mark

Size (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/812/0001a

serving dish

none

not known

5

1

DD/826/0001

serving-dish lid

none

not known

14

1

DD/591/0004

serving-dish lid

none

not known

1

1

DD/540/0007

plate

none

10¼

14

1

DD/824/0001

plate

Wood & Sons

9½

1

1

DD/508.07/0056

plate

none

9½

3

1

DD/529/0002

plate

none

9½

1

1

DD/534/0018

plate

none

9½

2

1

DD/539/0009

plate

none

9½

2

1

DD/540/0005

plate

none

9½

4

1

DD/541/0007

plate

none

9½

1

1

DD/541/0010

plate

none

9½

2

0

DD/543/0016a and b

plate

none

9½

8

0

DD/543/0019a

plate

none

9½

1

0

DD/544/0003a, b and c

plate

none

9½

6

1

DD/545/0010

plate

none

9½

3

1

DD/547/0009

plate

none

9½

1

1

DD/548/0006

plate

none

9½

11

1

DD/548/0007

plate

none

9½

6

0

DD/548/0022

plate

none

9½

1

0

DD/552/0012

plate

none

9½

1

1

DD/566/0006

plate

none

9½

3

1

DD/566/0033

plate

none

9½

4

0

DD/574/0006

plate

none

9½

1

1

DD/576/0032

plate

none

9½

1

1

DD/811/0019

plate

none

9½

1

1

DD/814/0007

plate

none

9½

2

1

DD/818/0012

plate

none

9½

2

1

DD/819/0002

plate

none

9½

1

1

DD/820/0020

plate

none

9½

4

1

DD/820/0022

plate

none

9½

9

0

DD/820/0023b

plate

none

9½

1

0

DD/820/0035e and h

plate

none

9½

4

0

DD/822/0006b

plate

none

9½

1

1

DD/822/0008

plate

none

9½

1

0

DD/541/0011

plate

Wood & Sons

not known

1

0

DD/543/0013a–b and f

plate

Wood & Sons

not known

5

1

DD/543/0017

plate

Wood & Sons

not known

2

1

DD/556/0032

plate

none

not known

4

1

DD/534/0015

base only

Wood & Sons

not known

1

0

DD/540/0006

base only

Wood & Sons

not known

1

0

137

28

Totals

55

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 5.14. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims with a relief-moulded shell pattern, some with Nippon Koshitsu Toki Co. mark. Cat. nos.

Maker’s mark

Vessel

Size (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/513/0002a, b and c

none

plate

10¼

7

1

DD/537/0007

none

plate

10¼

1

1

DD/537/0010a

none

plate

10¼

2

0

DD/577/0008

Nippon Koshitsu Toki Co.

plate

not known

1

1

DD/506/12/0043j, k and l

none

bowl

7¾

3

1

DD/535/0027

none

bowl

7¾

3

1

DD/537/0010b

none

bowl

7¾

1

1

DD/537/0017

none

bowl

7¾

2

0

DD/577/0007

none

bowl

7¾

1

1

DD/578/0006

Nippon Koshitsu Toki Co.

bowl

7¾

1

1

22

8

Totals

plates, making it a likely dinner set, these plates are smaller than the Meakin feather pattern dinner plates (Table 5.12).

definition of matching sets (see Figures 60 and 61), although each identifiable pattern notably occurs on only one identifiable vessel type. Those without maker’s marks are likely to belong in this post-1890 category. On the basis of their evidently small feet and the jigger marks on the bases of these vessels they can be dated after 1890. Their similarity with the above dated relief-moulded sets also implies they are post-1890, and probably twentiethcentury in date.

Shell pattern – Nippon Koshitsu Toki Co. Twenty-two fragments from OKH are decorated with a pattern consisting of a raised band around the rim, which deviates from the slightly scalloped rim shape in six areas wavering below a shell-like relief moulding (e.g. cat. no. DD/513/0002a – Figure 58; Table 5.14).

Beads and starburst daisies(?) pattern – Wood & Sons Ltd

These fragments comprise a minimum of eight vessels, three of which were large dinner plates and five probably soup bowls. Green-printed marks on the bases of cat. no. DD/578/0006 (Figure 59) and cat. no. DD/577/0008, ‘(crest with letters ‘K N/ A/ Z W’ supported by two dragons in front of rayed sunburst)/ NIPPON KOSHITSU TOKI CO/ MADE IN JAPAN’, identify the manufacturer as Nippon Koshitsu Toki Co., Japan, and indicates a date after 1921 (Stitt 1974: 176). Again, the number of vessels with this pattern, if not the range of vessel types, identifies this as another dinner set. The plates are the same size as the Meakin feather-pattern plates (Table 5.12), but the bowls are smaller than those in the latter set.

Twenty-five fragments comprising an MNV of five plates, of which at least four are large dinner plates, have scalloped rims decorated with a bead and starburst daisies(?) reliefmoulded pattern (e.g. cat. no. DD/531/005b – Figure 60; Table 5.15). Some have the base mark ‘(crown)/ WOOD & SONS LTD (in banner)/ ENGLAND’, dating from 1910 onwards (North Staffordshire Pottery Industry, Pottery, A–Z of Stoke-on-Trent Potters), and the same profile as the slightly smaller plates with the Wood and Sons Ltd fan-and-scallop pattern (Table 5.13). It is conceivable that these plates constituted replacements for the other two scalloped-rimmed sets above (Tables 5.12 and 5.14), with the same-sized 10¼-inch plates. The plate size, rather than the maker, is likely to have been of greater significance in compiling these complementary sets.

A further nine relief-moulded patterns each occur on adequate numbers of vessels to concur with our

Table 5.15. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims decorated with a relief-moulded pattern of beads and starburst daisies(?), some with Wood & Sons Ltd mark. Cat. nos.

Maker’s mark

Vessel

Size (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/531/0005b

Wood & Sons Ltd

plate

10¼

11

1

DD/531/0006

Wood & Sons Ltd

plate

10¼

4

1

DD/531/0009

none

plate

10¼

5

0

DD/567/0003

none

plate

10¼

2

1

DD/822/0007

none

plate

10¼

1

1

DD/543/0011

Wood & Sons Ltd

plate

not known

1

1

DD/544/0014

Wood & Sons Ltd

plate?

not known

1

0

25

5

Totals

56

Tableware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead Table 5.16. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims decorated with a relief-moulded pattern of beading and a raised band. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Size (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/538/0003

plate

9½

1

1

DD/582/0009

plate

9½

1

1

DD/584/0004

plate

9½

9

1

DD/586/0030

plate

9½

1

1

12

4

Totals

Gilt-edged with unidentifiable moulded pattern Fragments from a further four plates, at least two of which were 10¼-inch dinner plates, again have scalloped and gilded rims, but the moulded pattern is too poorly preserved to identify (Table 5.18). These may also have constituted replacements for some of the above sets. Festoon-and-shield decoration A relief pattern of festoons and shields (e.g. cat. no. DD/822/0003 – Figure 61c) occurs on the remains of four soup plates only (Table 5.19). Again, these have scalloped rims and were the same size as the soup plates with feather pattern (Table 5.12), and so are likely to have been part of a complementary set.

Beading and raised bands pattern Another 12 fragments with scalloped rims decorated with a bead-and-raised-band pattern (e.g. cat. no. DD/584/0004 – Figure 61a) comprised four slightly smaller dinner plates (Table 5.16), of the same size as the plates with the Wood and Sons Ltd fan-and-scallop pattern (Table 5.13).

Beads, ‘S’ scrolls and circles pattern Fragments from at least four soup plates, of two slightly different but large sizes, with scalloped rims decorated with a pattern of beads, ‘S’ scrolls and circles (e.g. cat. no. DD/805/0019 – Figure 61d) were recorded (Table 5.20). The different sizes of these similar vessel types suggest that they were not purchased together.

Stylised floral spray pattern Another eight fragments with scalloped rims decorated with a relief-moulded stylised floral spray pattern (e.g. cat. no. DD/801/0016 – Figure 61b) probably comprised another five large dinner plates (Table 5.17). Again, these may have complemented some of the above scallopedrimmed and relief-moulded sets.

Thin lines and ‘C’ scrolls pattern Fragments from another three soup plates with scalloped rims had a slightly different pattern, comprising thin lines and ‘C’ scrolls (e.g. cat. no. DD/593/0008 – Figure 61e),

Table 5.17. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims decorated with a relief-moulded stylised floral spray pattern. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Size (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/809/0012

plate

10¼+

1

1

DD/558/0003

plate

10¼

2

1

DD/558/0016

plate

10¼

1

0

DD/593/0014

plate

10¼

1

1

DD/801/0016

plate

10¼

2

1

DD/817/0008

plate

10¼

1

1

8

5

Totals

Table 5.19. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims decorated with a relief-moulded festoon-and-shield pattern.

Vessel

Size (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

Vessel

Size No. (inches) sherds

DD/547/0011

soup plate 10

2

1

DD/596/0011

soup plate 10

2

1

DD/599/0007

soup plate 10

1

1

DD/822/0003

soup plate 10

7

1

12

4

Totals

Table 5.18. Tableware vessels with gilt-edged and scalloped rims decorated with an unidentifiable relief-moulded pattern. Cat. nos.

Cat. nos.

MNV

Table 5.20. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims decorated with a relief-moulded pattern of beads, ‘S’ scrolls and circles. Cat. nos.

Vessel

DD/509.09/0094

Size (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

soup plate 10¾

1

1

DD/544/0016a

plate

10¼

3

1

DD/806/0008

plate

10¼

2

1

DD/807/0004

plate

not known

1

1

DD/509.16/0171a and b

soup plate 10¾

7

0

soup plate 10¾

1

1

plate

not known

DD/599/0006

DD/820/0036b

1

1

DD/804/0003

soup plate 10¾

2

1

DD/820/0043

plate

not known

1

0

DD/509.10/0102

soup plate 10

1

1

DD/805/0019

soup plate 10

1

1

8

4

13

5

Totals

Totals

57

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 5.21. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims decorated with a relief-moulded pattern of thin lines and ‘C’ scrolls. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Size (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/593/0008

soup plate

10

2

1

DD/801/0010

soup plate

10

2

1

DD/805/0015

soup plate

10

1

1

5

3

Totals

plates in this group have very similar patterns to, or share profile features with, other marked plates. For example, the patterns on cat. nos. DD/576/0013 (Figure 61o) and DD/568/0002 (Figure 61p) are similar to the Wood and Sons Ltd fan-and-scallop pattern (Table 5.13); see Figure 55. Cat. no. DD/531/0007a (Figure 64) has a similar profile to those same Wood and Sons Ltd plates (see particularly cat. nos. DD/819/0002 – Figure 54 – and DD/824/0001 – Figure 57). Another example is a plate with a small foot (cat. no. DD/549/0006 – Figure 65), which is a feature also found on Meakin & Johnson Bros plates dated from the second and third decades of the twentieth century. While many of the large plates have the diameters of 10–10¼-inch dinner plates, it is conceivable that they could have been used for serving cakes or sandwiches with tea settings, rather than as parts of dining sets. This might also explain the gilding of some of these plates that do not appear to belong with any of the identified relief-moulded sets.

and may, again, have been for a similarly complementary set (Table 5.21). Pattern of vertical ridges above pendant scroll A further four soup plates, of the same size as those with the above pattern and also with scalloped rims, have yet another relief-moulded pattern (e.g. cat. no. DD/547/0010 – Figure 61f) and may again have been replacements for the above sets (Table 5.22). It is noteworthy that these last four patterns occur only on soup plates.

The similarities of all these relief-moulded patterns, and of their scalloped rims, suggests that they were conceivably all part of one large set that was continuously replaced, possibly over several decades, with similar-sized vessels but slightly different patterns. The range of relief-moulded patterns suggests a lack of concern for perfect matching or for truly complementary sets, in the nineteenth-century sense. It is notable that, despite the increased numbers of vessels, the range of plate sizes and types among the three main relief-moulded sets (Tables 5.12–14) is limited compared with some of the earlier sets with comparable numbers of vessels (e.g. the Rhine pattern set – Table 5.4). This range is also not as diverse as the likely contemporary, or possibly even later, dark blue-banded set, or the clearglazed 12-sided set, discussed below.

Table 5.22. Tableware vessels with scalloped rims decorated with a relief-moulded pattern of vertical ridges above a pendant scroll. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Size (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/547/0010

soup plate

10

3

1

DD/582/0004

soup plate

10

1

1

DD/586/0032a

soup plate

10

1

1

DD/814/0009

soup plate

10

2

1

7

4

Totals

Plain white body, clear glaze Other relief-moulded patterns

The other main group of post-1890 tablewares recorded at OKH are plain, clear-glazed earthenwares.

One hundred and nine fragments, identified as an MNV of 30 vessels, have at least 19 different relief-moulded patterns, but each pattern has insufficient quantities of vessels to be considered a set (Table 5.23; for some of these, see Figures 61g–s). The majority of these vessels are serving dishes, platters and larger plates which may have been components of some of the more complete dinner sets with relief-moulded patterns, perhaps as replacement vessels. One, at least, has evidence of gilding. Three plates and two bowls have makers’ marks. A plate decorated with a Lily of the Valley pattern (cat. no. DD/579/0021– Figure 61r) has the mark ‘… URA/ [I]N JAPAN’, which dates it from 1921 (Stitt 1974: 176). Two plates marked ‘BY/ REGD SOL 391413/ (rising sun face)/ J & G MEAKIN/ ENGLAND/ 1851/ CENTENARY (in banner)/ 1951’ (see cat. no. DD/522/0006 – Figure 62; for relief-moulded pattern – Figure 61s) mark the Meakin centenary. Two large base fragments from bowls each have the mark ‘C/ SWINNERTONS/ (lamp)/ STAFFORDSHIRE/ ENG ...’ (e.g. cat. no. DD/522/0010 – Figure 63), which dates these bowls from 1946 (Godden 1991: 606). Some of the

Twelve-sided Among the plain, clear-glazed earthenwares is a set of some 20 12-sided vessels (Table 5.24). These vessels comprise the remains of some five serving dishes and one lid, at least one dinner plate, two possible entrée, supper or pudding plates, three cheese or breakfast plates, and some seven soup plates (e.g. cat. no. DD/509.10/0101a – Figure 66). The plates, including the soup plates, all have the same profile, consisting of a thin, tapered rim, a gently sloping shoulder and a small foot, suggesting they were purchased as a set (see e.g. cat. nos. DD/509.10/0101a – Figure 67 – and DD/814/0010 – Figure 68). One serving dish (cat. no. DD/576/0018) also has a green printed mark: ‘(crown)/ Johnson Bros/ England’, which can be dated after 1913 (Godden 1991: 356). A seemingly identical 12-sided dinner set is listed in the Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd 1914 mail order catalogue (1914: 1369). This dinner set is named ‘Imperial Shape’ 58

Tableware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead Table 5.23. Tableware vessels with other relief-moulded patterns. Cat. nos.

Pattern

Vessel

Size (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/559/0002b and c beads and scrolls

platter

not known

15

1

DD/506.04/0036a and b

feather pattern around rim and on shoulder

serving dish

not known

2

1

DD/510.09/0065

gilt clover and moulded dots

serving-dish lid

not known

1

1

DD/824/0014

wheat ears, daisies and scrolls

serving-dish lid

not known

1

1

DD/570/0007

unidentifiable moulding

serving-dish lid

not known

1

1

DD/822/0005

ornate ‘C’ scrolls and grapes

plate/platter

not known

1

1

DD/822/0013

ornate ‘C’ scrolls and grapes

plate/platter

not known

1

0

DD/822/0027

ornate ‘C’ scrolls and grapes

plate/platter

not known

1

0

DD/823/0004

scalloped rim with three scalloped parallel lines plate

10¾

7

1

DD/549/0006

ribbon and bow decoration

plate

10¼

6

1

DD/534/0021

beads and ornate scrolls

plate

10¼

2

1

DD/556/0007

beads and ornate scrolls

plate

10¼

1

1

DD/543/0014

ornate ‘C’ scrolls between fans and shields

plate

10¼

5

1

DD/535/0013

beads, lattice and floral garland

plate

10¼

1

1

DD/514/0001a and b simple ribbon decoration

plate

10

10

2

DD/531/0007a

band of alternating daisies and dots

plate

10

2

1

DD/543/0021a

scalloped rim, moulding unidentified

plate

10

1

0

DD/576/0013

ribbon scroll and fringe/comb decoration

plate

9½

3

1

DD/537/0013

scalloped rim, moulding unidentified

plate

9½

1

1

DD/543/0021b

scalloped rim, moulding unidentified

plate

9½

2

0

DD/568/0002

fringe/comb moulding and undulating lines

plate

8

1

1

DD/509.09/0095

scalloped gilded rim, moulding unidentified

plate

8

3

1

DD/597/0001c

scalloped rim, moulding unidentified

plate

8

1

1

DD/820/0038

tiara-like decoration

plate

7

1

1

DD/820/0044

tiara-like decoration

plate

7

2

0

DD/579/0021

Lily of the Valley

plate

7

3

1

DD/522/0006

Meakin centenary

plate

7

4

1

DD/525/0002

Meakin centenary

plate

7

1

0

DD/525/0003

Meakin centenary

plate

7

3

1

DD/563/0010

scrolls and pendant

plate

not known

1

1

DD/563/0011

scrolls and pendant

plate

not known

1

0

DD/563/0015

scrolls and pendant

plate

not known

1

0

DD/509.16/0172

scalloped rim, moulding unidentified

plate

not known

2

1

DD/556/0034

scalloped rim, moulding unidentified

plate

not known

3

0

DD/579/0018a

scalloped rim, moulding unidentified

plate

not known

5

0

DD/826/0002

scalloped rim, moulding unidentified

plate

not known

1

1

DD/522/0009b

Swinnertons – scallop and comb moulding

bowl

7½

1

1

DD/522/0010

Swinnertons – scallop and comb moulding

bowl

7½

6

0

DD/524/0001

Swinnertons – scallop and comb moulding

bowl

7½

2

1

DD/593/0013

misc. handles

serving dish?

not known

1

1

DD/820/0032

misc. handle

serving dish?

not known

1

0

DD/826/0004

misc. handle

serving dish?

not known

1

0

109

30

Totals

59

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 5.24. Plain white, clear-glazed, 12-sided tableware vessels, some with Johnson Bros mark. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Size (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/544/0017a

serving dish

10 x 8

2

1

DD/545/0004

serving dish

10 x 8

1

1

DD/576/0018

serving dish (with Johnson Bros mark)

10 x 8

19

1

DD/820/0019

serving dish

10 x 8

1

1

DD/820/0027

serving dish

10 x 8

2

0

DD/820/0035d

serving dish

10 x 8

1

0

DD/822/0014

serving dish

10 x 8

1

1

DD/549/0004

serving-dish lid

10 x 8

1

1

DD/509.14/0138a

plate

10

7

1

DD/509.16/0171c

plate

10

2

0

DD/509.06/0054b

plate

8¾

1

1

DD/509.10/0101a

plate

8¾

4

0

DD/538/0002

plate

8¾

1

1

DD/531/0007b

plate

7¼

3

1

DD/800/0006

plate

7¼

1

1

DD/814/0010

plate

7¼

2

1

DD/806/0009

plate

not known

1

1

DD/507.16/0149

soup plate

10

1

1

DD/509.03/0022

soup plate

10

3

1

DD/509.06/0054c

soup plate

10

1

0

DD/509.10/0101b

soup plate

10

6

0

DD/509.10/0101c

soup plate

10

1

0

DD/509.11/0104

soup plate

10

16

1

DD/509.13/0135b

soup plate

10

3

0

DD/509.14/0138b

soup plate

10

7

1

DD/531/0007c

soup plate

10

4

1

DD/805/0017

soup plate

10

2

1

DD/817/0011

soup plate

10

1

1

95

20

Totals

and described as ‘WHITE SEMI-PORCELAIN DINNER WARE’. It is listed again in their 1923 and 1924 catalogues, as ‘Imperial White Semi-Porcelain’ (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1923: 367, 1924: 367). While the sets in the latter two listings are the same in appearance as that in the 1914 listing, and all have 26 pieces, the plate sizes were all slightly larger in the earlier catalogue. There the plates are named as cheese (8¼ inch), dessert or pudding (9 inch), dinner and soup (10¼ inch), while, in both the 1923 and 1924 catalogues, the plates are listed only as 7, 8, 9 and 10 inch. Coupe soups and soup plates are both listed in the latter catalogues, and both 10 inch, but only 10¼-inch soup plates are in the 1914 catalogue. Of all the vessel sizes in these catalogues, only the 10-inch dinner and soup plates in the later catalogues are the same size as those from OKH. An identical-looking dinner set is illustrated in the Harris, Scarfe, Ltd 1920s mail order catalogue (1920–29: CG4), called ‘Grecian White’, but the plate sizes are not listed. Thus, this 12-sided set would appear to be a fairly readily available set in the second and third decades of the twentieth century, at least, with the

OKH set possibly more likely to have been purchased in the 1920s, given the plate sizes. The OKH dinner set differs from the relief-moulded sets recorded at OKH in that it comprises at least five different vessel types, suggesting it was for occasions with a greater number of courses and more complex settings than the relief-moulded sets. Circular and oval Some 15 plain white oval and circular vessels identified at OKH probably belong to another clear-glazed set (Table 5.25). These vessels included three oval serving dishes and a lid, a round serving dish and 11 plates of six different sizes, possibly dinner plates, entrée plates, and cheese or breakfast plates. Two oval serving dishes have remains of a green-printed maker’s mark, ‘(crown)/ J & G MEAKIN/ HANLEY/ ENGLAND (all in banner)’ (e.g. cat. no. DD/596/0009 – Figure 69), which dates after 1912 (North 60

Tableware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead Table 5.25. Plain white, clear-glazed, circular and oval tableware vessels, some with Meakin and Johnson Bros marks. Cat. nos.

Maker’s mark

Vessel

Size (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/596/0009

Meakin

serving dish

length 9½

3

1

DD/596/0016

Meakin

serving dish

length 9½

19

1

DD/804/0002

Meakin?

serving dish

length 9½

1

1

DD/555/0016

Meakin?

serving-dish lid

9½ x 7

4

1

DD/537/0014

none

serving dish

5½

1

1

DD/509.15/0155a, b and c

none

plate

10

6

1

DD/509.16/0171d

none

plate

10

3

0

DD/579/0014

none

plate

10

2

1

DD/509.05/0044

none

plate

9½

8

1

DD/509.12/0113a, b and c

none

plate

9

5

1

DD/509.06/0054a

none

plate

9

12

1

DD/509.13/0135a

none

plate

9

1

0

DD/509.15/0155d

none

plate

9

4

0

DD/549/0003

none

plate

8¼

2

1

DD/820/0036a

none

plate

8

1

1

DD/556/0031

none

plate

8

6

1

DD/549/0007

Johnson Bros

plate

7

4

1

DD/801/0011

Johnson Bros

plate

7

1

1

DD/814/0008

Johnson Bros

plate

not known

1

1

84

16

Totals

Blue dyed-body, clear glaze

Staffordshire Pottery Industry, Pottery, A–Z of Stoke-onTrent Potters). Another serving dish (cat. no. DD/804/002) of the same size and shape is likely to be a Meakin vessel, as is the oval lid (cat. no. DD/555/0016). Two of the small 7-inch circular plates and one of unknown size have remains of the mark ‘ROYAL IRONSTONE WARE/ (crown)/ JOHNSON BROS/ ENGLAND’ (cat. no. DD/801/0011 – Figure 70) which dates them after 1913 (North Staffordshire Pottery Industry, Pottery, A–Z of Stoke-on-Trent Potters). These differing makers’ marks imply that these vessels probably comprised a complementary set. The presence of serving dishes and large plates suggests it was a dinner service. While it was very simple in design, although with elaborate handles on the serving dishes, it has a greater range of plate sizes and possibly plate types than the relief-moulded sets. The unmarked vessels could date pre- or post-1890, along with remains of another three possible serving dishes, eight plates of unidentified dimensions, two bowls and other identified vessels (see Appendix 2c) of refined white, clearglazed earthenware. On the other hand, the makers’ marks indicate that at least some of these vessels were purchased during or after the second decade of the twentieth century, and also that replacements were purchased. The profile of one unmarked dinner plate (cat. no. DD/579/0014 – Figure 71) is similar to a Meakin feather-patterned plate (DD/506.09/0043c – Figure 53), which probably also dates it from 1912. Given the very simple design, these vessels may have formed a rather utilitarian dinner service, but notably with serving dishes. Alternatively, the different vessels could have served as cheap replacements for some of the above sets.

Remains of some six earthenware vessels have a blue dyedbody (Table 5.26). These vessels include a small rectangular serving dish with a moulded feather pattern on its flat handles (cat. no. DD/592/0011 – Figure 72), and the partial stem and body of a vessel that was probably an egg cup (cat. no. DD/554/0001 – Figure 7318). One possible plate (cat. no. A02/072/0048 – Figure 74), of a paler blue than the other vessels, is marked: ‘SWINNERT …/ (lamp)/ STAFFORDSHI[RE]/ MADE IN ENGL[AND]/ … CHELSE[A]’, which dates it from 1946 (Godden 1991: 606). The lack of any marks on any of the other vessels means that they could date any time after the 1820s (Griffin 2001: 167). It seems probable, however, that all of these vessels made up a complementary set added to in the last decades of OKH’s occupation. The inclusion of what may have been relatively large cups rather than small bowls, owing to their thin walls, and a possible egg cup in this set suggests it may have been a breakfast set.

18 This fragment does not appear to be blue in this photo. Often dyedbody fabrics only have a hint of the colour in the clay, which is not always obvious. The colour is brought out when they are covered with a clear glaze or if the broken edge is wet.

61

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 5.26. Blue dyed-body tableware vessels with clear glaze. Cat. nos.

Maker’s mark

Vessel

Size (inches)

No. sherds

MNV

DD/592/0011

none

serving dish

not known

2

1

A02/072/0048

Swinnertons

plate?

not known

1

1

DD/586/0029

none

plate

9

1

1

DD/554/0001

none

egg cup?

not known

1

1

DD/546/0004

none

cup/bowl

4–5

1

1

DD/589/0002

none

cup/bowl

not known

1

1

7

6

Totals Table 5.27. Miscellaneous vessel forms, patterns and bases, likely to be tableware. Cat. nos.

Maker’s mark

Decoration

Vessel

Size

No. sherds

MNV

DD/506.06/0043b

Meakin

not known

plate

not known

1

0

DD/506.11/0043f, g, h and i

Meakin

not known

plate

not known

4

0

DD/578/0007

Meakin

not known

plate

not known

1

1

DD/805/0004a

Meakin

not known

plate

not known

2

1

DD/805/0004b

Meakin

not known

plate

not known

1

0

DD/809/0004

Meakin

not known

plate

not known

2

1

DD/544/0012b

Meakin

not known

base only

not known

1

0

DD/548/0026

Meakin

not known

base only

not known

1

1

DD/563/0007

Meakin

not known

base only

not known

1

0

14

4

Totals

The post-1890 Cuba and blue dyed-body sets are possibly exceptions here, having fewer vessels than the other post1890 sets. The Cuba set also seems to demonstrate a break from the nineteenth-century provision of numerous earlier complementary sets, by the introduction of a newly purchased perfectly matching set. Another main set, the 12-sided set, was probably purchased in the first decades of the twentieth century, and was probably a cheaper set, but also used for relatively complex dining, given the range of vessel types and plate sizes in the set. Consecutively, and perhaps a little later, there was likely to have been two larger sets, perhaps used for larger gatherings. Probably the earlier one, possibly purchased from 1912, was the relief-moulded set with a limited range of vessels and two differently sized dinner plates, soup plates and bowls for a simple everyday setting. Probably in the next decade, although conceivably as early as 1912, the blue-banded and gilded set with a range of vessels was purchased for a more elaborate table setting. Replacements for both these sets seem to have been purchased, and they were both probably used for several decades. The plain white set was undoubtedly also an everyday set. It seems less extensive than these other, more decorative, sets, although this may be the result of the collection strategy. Thus, these sets indicate several different kinds of table settings and related gatherings after 1890, and especially from the second decade of the twentieth century, but all seemingly dinner services. Only one set, the blue dyed-body set, would not seem to have been a dinner set.

Miscellaneous tablewares At least four vessels with different Meakin base marks can all be dated after 1912 (North Staffordshire Pottery Industry, Pottery, A–Z of Stoke-on-Trent Potters) (see e.g. cat. no. DD/563/0007 – Figure 75; Table 5.27) but cannot be definitely assigned to any of the Meakin dark bluebanded and gilded, moulded feather pattern or plain white sets (see Tables 5.9–12). What is immediately apparent from the post-1890 tablewares is that, while there are a lot more vessels covering a longer period, there are not more sets, and possibly actually fewer: one Cuba set; one dark bluebanded and gilded set with replacements from at least one different manufacturer; one 12-sided set; and probably one rather large relief-moulded set whose range of vessel types was fairly limited, and with numerous replacements by different manufacturers for which the decoration did not match specifically. As noted above, the blue dyedbody set and the plain white set could both conceivably have been around in the nineteenth century, but were still being used, and vessels replaced, into at least the 1940s in the case of the former. In general, each post-1890 set had considerably greater numbers of vessels than those prior to 1890, the exception being the pre-1890 Rhine pattern set. This could be due to the nature of their recovery but, equally, to their being used over a longer period of time, by more people at one sitting, or perhaps more frequently. 62

Tableware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead Summary

Table 5.28. Types and quantities of tableware vessels from OKH.

The majority of the identified pre-1890 tableware vessels found at OKH seem to constitute a number of matching and complementary sets. Notably, some of these sets – i.e. Willow, Albion and Asiatic Pheasant pattern sets – were produced up to 45 years before this homestead was built, and also some decades before Kinchega was occupied by Europeans. While there are essentially six main matching and complementary pre-1890 sets, many of the remains with other patterns may have constituted additional, less well-matched, parts of these main sets. The vessel types among the main sets indicate that four, at least, were likely to have been dinner or supper sets, and the other two (Willow and Cable) could conceivably have been for other occasions. While these sets are relatively cheap and freely available types, and not all specifically matching, the OKH occupants had a notable quantity and range of different sets and types of table settings, probably over less than 20 years. It is likely that they may have brought some of these sets with them to OKH, and, for some at least, added to them over the years as individual vessels were broken.

Vessel

By contrast, in the 65 years after 1890 there were fewer sets. Three of the sets were very distinctive, which may have meant they were less interchangeable than the earlier transfer-printed sets that could have continued in use. These three post-1890 sets each also had a relatively wide range of vessel types. Two would seem to have been one-off purchases (the Cuba and 12-sided sets), while replacements would seem to have been bought for the third, dark blue-banded and gilded set, perhaps over several decades. However, most of the post-1890 tablewares belonged to what appears to be a fourth, large, amorphous, relief-moulded set whose vessels were interchangeable, irrespective of their sizes and patterns. This set also had a relatively limited range of vessel types, mainly dinner plates, indicating a rather simple table setting. Interestingly, most of the relief-moulded soup plates were in different patterns from those of the three main dinner plate patterns, suggesting these were purchased as independent lots.

Size (inches)

c.1876–89 1890–1955

serving dishes and lids 10

6

serving dishes and lids 9–9½

5

serving dishes and lids 8–8¾

1

serving dishes and lids 6¼–6¾ serving dishes and lids unknown

2 3

19

9

platters

unknown

9

4

plates/platters

unknown

1

1

plates

10¼–10¾

1

36

plates

10

14

4

plates

8¾–9½

1

44

plates

8–8¾

14

8

plates

7–7¼

1

12

plates

6–6¾

plates

small

2

plates

not known

15

plates – soup

10–10¾

plates – soup

not known

bowls

8–8¾

6

bowls

7½–7¾

10

3 22 27 1

bowls

not known

eggcup

not known

1

1 1

gravy boat

not known

1

serving dishes/bowls

not known

4

plates/saucers

not known

3

cups/bowls

4–5

1

cups/bowls

not known

1

unknown vessel Totals

1 87

208

between the different periods are difficult to explain. It is notable, though, that each of the relief-moulded patterns seems to have plates of a specific size and that the greater ranges of plate sizes, which might explain these vessel numbers, are found in the dark blue-banded and gilded and the 12-sided sets. Also, although there are more than twice as many post-1890 tablewares, the number of serving dishes in both phases is similar, and the majority of the platters date prior to 1890. Conversely, all except one of the soup plates, and possibly one bowl, probably date after 1890. Only one gravy boat was recorded in the whole assemblage, which belonged to a post-1890 set. These differences in vessel types and sizes demonstrate changing table settings, with more matching serving dishes and platters in the nineteenth century, and possibly relatively smaller-sized plates as dinner and entrée or supper plates. Soup was seemingly a more important part of the later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century meals. As noted above, soup was usually served in soup plates, with ‘soup coupes’ probably appearing after 1914.

From c.1890, there also appears to have been a change in the types of vessels that made up a tableware set. Table 5.28 comprises a collation of the different vessel types and their sizes among these tablewares, before and after 1890. Undated vessels, which are predominantly plates whose measurements are not known (Appendix 2c), are not included here. This table indicates changes, after 1890, in the preferred vessel types used, and also in their sizes. These differences are particularly notable among the plates, both dinner plates and other types of plates, for which there seem to be different preferred sizes for each period. Prior to 1890, 10inch dinner and 8–8¾-inch cheese or breakfast plates are the most common plate size. After this date, larger 10¼– 10¾-inch, as well as 8¾–9½-inch dinner and entrée plates, and 7–7¼ -inch cheese or breakfast plates, were the most common. These size preferences that seem to alternate 63

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Thus, these tableware sets appear to document changing dining practices among the residents of OKH over its 70year occupancy. The smaller, often old-fashioned, table settings prior to 1890, but also more complex settings, suggest limited numbers of guests but an apparent obligation to aspire to a genteel display during meals, if using relatively common and cheap patterned sets for such display. The first probably new, fashionable and perfectly matching tableware set was probably purchased after 1890, seemingly in keeping with the late nineteenthcentury middle-class necessity for genteel display (Gray 2013: 35), and suggesting the opportunity, as well as a need, for such a status table setting at this time. Thereafter, a relief-moulded set, with non-matching replacements, seems to have been the only purchase until probably the 1920s, when a new, relatively fashionable, elegantly shaped, but plainer, 12-sided set was purchased, and probably not added to. In contrast, the more complex and gilded dark

blue-banded set, possibly purchased in the mid-1920s if not earlier, would seem to have been continuously added to. It cannot be discounted that some of the nineteenthcentury sets may well have continued in use into the twentieth century. However, the age of some of these sets by the early twentieth century, and the apparently more limited number of well-matched twentieth-century sets, suggest less necessity in this new century for genteel dining standards that required more than a couple of reasonably matched, if larger and elegantly shaped or decorated, dinner sets, over a much longer period. The more limited range of sets after 1890, and also of vessel types in each, suggests less value placed on numerous courses, except perhaps on the most formal occasions. The apparent large size of the not exactly matching sets with relief-moulded patterns implies much larger, perhaps less formal, gatherings from c.1912 and into the 1920s, and possibly into the 1930s, at least.

64

6 Teaware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead P. Allison and V. Esposito Remains of some 450 cups, saucers, teapots and small, possibly bread-and-butter plates were recorded at OKH. Some can be identified as teaware sets, as defined in chapter four (p. 37), and can be separated into likely pre1890 teawares and those datable between 1890 and 1955. As also outlined in chapter four (pp. 38–39), though, the range and types of fabrics, patterns and makers’ marks among these teawares means that the identification of matching or complementary sets is less straightforward than for the tableware sets. As in the previous chapter, the rim diameters in the following tables are given in inches, for comparison with the different vessel types in Table 4.2. The concordance with recorded metric measurements is found in Appendices 3a–b. Information on the profiles and handle shapes is included in these tables, where these can be identified. Many of the cups at OKH were straight-sided, either with a plain rounded lower body or rounded at the base edge only, and plain ring foot, but it is not always clear how much they actually flared. Cups are described here as either ‘flaring, straight-sided’ or ‘vertically straight-sided’ only where this is clearly distinguishable. The more rounded lower bodies of some of the remains of porcelain teawares may suggest their sides were more vertical.

comprising an MNV of eight teaware vessels that probably date to prior to 1890 (Table 6.1). Enough vessels have been identified in two of these patterns – Honeysuckle and the ‘linked lotus flowers, palmettes and scrolls’ pattern – to identify them as forming matching sets, according to our definition. The so-called Honeysuckle pattern, which comprises an egg-and-dot pattern at the vessel rim with scrolled palmettes below, is found on the remains of at least two cups and two saucers from OKH (e.g. cat. no. DD/822/0016 – Figure 76). This pattern has also been found on the remains of a cup and two saucers from a site in Penrith, NSW, which have the maker’s mark of Frederick Jones, Longton, dating 1865–86 (Ward 2005: 25). The interior rims of both of the OKH cups have a transfer print that is indistinct in places, creating a blurred effect on part of the pattern (see cat. no. DD/822/0016 – Figure 77 – and cat. no. DD/811/0017 – Figure 79), suggesting they may have been of ‘seconds’ quality. The exterior of cat. no. DD/811/0017 (Figure 78) also has a partial misplacement of the transfer at the rim (for discussion on flaws, see chapter seven, p. 105). Two other cups have a pattern of ‘linked lotus flowers and palmettes in volute scrolls with a band of ovolos below’ (e.g. DD/588/0007 – Figure 80), and could conceivably constitute a second blue transfer-printed set. These two blue transfer-printed sets have similar pattern elements – i.e. lotus flowers, palmettes and ovolos. These are classical elements which Samford argued had a mean range of production between 1827 and 1847 (Samford 1997: 6), indicating that both these sets are likely to have been produced prior to 1890. Another saucer (cat. no. DD/515/0002 – Figure 81) has a floral pattern featuring volute urns, which is one of Samford’s characteristic classical motifs produced until the late 1860s (Samford 1997: 13). This saucer is, therefore, also likely to be pre-1890 in date. While there are some similarities between these three blue transfer-printed patterns, particularly the first two, the visual differences in the patterns means that if these vessels had been parts of complementary sets, the sets would not have been well matched. Given its likely production date, the Honeysuckle pattern could have been bought as a new set during the period of the occupancy of OKH.A further saucer fragment has a blue flown sponge-printed pattern (cat. no. A02X/117/0002 – Figure 82). This decoration was made with a soft-edged sponge, which dates its production prior to 1870 (Kelly et al. 2001: 10). This fragment was recovered from beneath the floorboards of Room 02X, at the northern end of the main homestead building. While noteworthy, it is insufficient to be considered part of a set of this type.

Probably pre-1890 (Appendix 3a) Remains of some 39 earthenware and bone china cups and saucers recorded at OKH are likely to date prior to 1890. Most of these vessels are decorated with a range of different transfer-printed patterns (in blue, purple, black, green, brown and red). Most of the patterns do not occur on an adequate numbers of vessels to identify them as parts of matching sets, by standard definitions. However, they do match our own definition (see chapter four, p. 38), which considers the existence of small ‘tête à tête’ tea sets. Also, some, especially those of the same colour, could perhaps have been parts of complementary sets or replacements. These teawares have, therefore, been grouped below according to their fabric and to the colour of their decoration. Only one of these decorative patterns could be definitely dated to the nineteenth century. Earthenware Blue transfer-printed and sponge-printed patterns Three different blue transfer-printed patterns and one blue sponge-printed pattern were identified on ten fragments,

65

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 6.1. Earthenware teaware vessels with blue transfer-printed and sponge-printed patterns, probably dating prior to 1890. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Pattern

Rim diam. (inches)

Profiles and handles

No. sherds

MNV

DD/537/0008

cup

Honeysuckle

c.3½

rolled, slightly everted rim; straight-sided

1

0

DD/811/0017

cup

Honeysuckle (transfer print blurred and mismatched)

c.3½

rolled, slightly everted rim; straight-sided

1

1

DD/822/0016

cup

Honeysuckle (transfer print blurred)

c.3½

rolled, slightly everted rim

1

1

DD/563/0006

saucer

Honeysuckle

6¼

not identified

1

1

DD/563/0017

saucer

Honeysuckle

not known

not identified

1

0

DD/566/0017

saucer

Honeysuckle

not known

not identified

1

1

DD/507.03/0018

cup

linked lotus flowers at rim, palmettes in volute scrolls, ovolos below

c.3⅓

rolled rim; straight-sided

1

1

DD/588/0007

cup

linked lotus flowers at rim, palmettes in volute scrolls, ovolos below

c.3⅓

rolled rim; slightly flaring straight sides and rounded lower body

1

1

DD/515/0002

saucer

blue volute urns and floral pattern

not known

rounded body

1

1

A02X/117/0002

saucer

flown blue sponge print

not known

rolled, slightly everted rim; rounded body

1

1

10

8

Totals

Black transfer-printed patterns

a band of rosette flowers in a honeycomb pattern on the inside rim (Figure 87). Continuous geometric borders were commonly produced until the 1860s (Samford 1997: 18). Remains of another cup and two saucers each have a black transfer-printed pattern consisting of a symmetrical pattern of small flowers with scrolling stems, interspersed with diagonal cartouches containing a large daisy-like flower (cat. no. DD/561/0003 – Figure 85). This pattern is repeated four times around the saucer and twice around the cup. The saucer has a black-printed maker’s mark ‘J. M. & Co’ with an impressed W or M and the pattern name ‘MAY

Three different black transfer-printed patterns were identified among ten fragments from OKH, and comprise eight teaware vessels (Table 6.2). Among these vessels, at least two matching sets can be identified. Remains of two cups and two saucers are each decorated, on the outside, with a black meander pattern between two thin bands at the rim and a floral design below (e.g. cat. no. DD/581/0002 – Figure 86). The cups also have

Table 6.2. Earthenware teaware vessels with black transfer-printed patterns, probably dating prior to 1890. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Pattern

DD/581/0002

cup

meander pattern at outside rim between thin black bands, black floral design 3⅛ below

rolled rim; vertically 1 straight-sided

1

DD/582/0003

cup

meander pattern at outside rim between thin black bands, black floral design 3⅛ below

rolled rim; vertically 1 straight-sided

1

DD/536/0011

saucer

meander pattern at outside rim between thin black bands, black floral design not known below

not identified

1

1

DD/554/0003

saucer

meander pattern at outside rim between 5½ thin black bands, black floral design below

not identified

1

1

DD/592/0009

cup

May Flower

not known

rolled rim; vertically 3 straight-sided

1

DD/561/0003

saucer

May Flower

6¼

rounded body

1

1

DD/586/0028

saucer

May Flower

not known

not identified

1

1

cup

voluted vegetal pattern on a black linear 3⅛ background

rolled rim; vertically 1 straight-sided

1

DD/580/0005

Rim diam. (inches)

Totals

Profiles and handles

No. sherds

10

66

MNV

8

Teaware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead The classical motifs on these vessels (e.g. meanders) were common until the 1860s (Samford 1997: 13). One cup and two saucers have a meander pattern at the rim, with a rolled white ribbon below (e.g. cat. no. DD/558/0015 – Figure 88), and therefore constitute a matching set. Remains of another cup and saucer have another purple transferprinted pattern with diamonds (e.g. cat. no. DD/561/0002 – Figure 89), and so constitute a further matching set. Another four purple transfer-printed patterns are each identified on the remains of a single vessel only: one cup with a band at the rim, with ovolos and a meander below (cat. no. DD/534/0017 – Figure 90); two other cups, each with further different floral and vegetal patterns (cat. no. A02XVer/123/0009 – Figure 91; cat. no. A02XVer/087/0011 – Figure 92); and one saucer with yet another vegetal and spiral pattern (cat. no. DD/801/0007 – Figure 93). It is conceivable that these slightly different patterns may have formed roughly complementary sets, purchased prior to the occupation of OKH.

FLOWER’ (Figure 84). This mark does not help to identify a single pottery, as at least four firms that could have produced this pattern had these initials: James Macintyre & Co., Burslem, England (c.1860); John Marshall & Co., Borrowstounness, Scotland (c.1860–99); J. Maudesley & Co., Tunstall, England (c.1862–64); and J. Miller & Co., Glasgow, Scotland (c.1869–75) (North Staffordshire Pottery Industry, Pottery, A–Z of Stoke-on-Trent Potters). This cup and saucer conceivably formed part of a small set or a roughly complementary set to the black transfer-printed set with meander and floral design, although, given its date range, the May Flower set was more likely to have been purchased as new within the lifetime of the homestead. Remains of another single cup had a black, voluted vegetal design on a linear background, on both inside and outside (cat. no. DD/580/0005 – Figure 83), which is a pattern type produced prior to 1890 (Samford 1997: 18). This may have been part of a complementary set with the other black transfer-printed teawares. Where identified, all the cups have very similar vertically straight-sided profiles.

Green transfer-printed patterns

Purple transfer-printed patterns

Three fragments of cups with three different green floral transfer-printed patterns were identified at the OKH (Table 6.4).

Nine fragments, possibly comprising nine different cups and saucers, with six different purple transfer-printed patterns were identified at OKH (Table 6.3).

Table 6.3. Earthenware teaware vessels with purple transfer-printed patterns, probably dating prior to 1890. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Pattern

Rim diam. (inches)

Profiles and handles

No. sherds

MNV

DD/507.02/0011

cup

meander at rim, purple band with rolled white ribbon inside, band of purple scrolls below

not known

not identified

1

1

DD/558/0015

saucer

meander at rim, purple band with rolled white ribbon inside, band of purple scrolls below

7⅛

rolled rim; rounded body

1

1

DD/592/0008

saucer

meander at rim, purple band with rolled white ribbon inside, band of purple scrolls below

not known

rounded body; ring foot with gully

1

1

A02Ver/33/0078

cup

band of diamonds above a band of squares at the rim, with interlaced ribbon and garlands

not known

rolled rim;

1

1

flaring, straight-sided

DD/561/0002

saucer

band of diamonds above a band of squares at the rim, with interlaced ribbon and garlands

6¼

rolled rim; rounded body

1

1

DD/534/0017

cup

meander pattern on outside below band (messily applied) and ovolos at rim, both inside and outside

c. 3¾

rolled rim;

1

1

vertically straight-sided

A02XVer/123/0009

cup

floral pattern, slightly flown

not known

not identified

1

1

A02XVer/087/0011

cup

small leaves

not known

not identified

1

1

DD/801/0007

saucer

linked oval loops with vine leaves between, and voluted teardrops below

not known

rounded body

1

1

9

9

Totals

67

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 6.4. Earthenware teaware vessels with green transfer-printed patterns, probably dating prior to 1890. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Pattern

Rim diam. (inches)

Profiles and handles

DD/583/0011

cup

floral pattern with, on outside: band of small circles at rim, linked bunches of flowers below linear background; on inside: band of dots and looped circles at rim

3⅛

rolled rim; 1 straight-sided

1

DD/599/0004

cup

all-over vegetal pattern (unevenly applied)

not known

rolled rim; 1 straight-sided

1

DD/573/0020

cup

blue-green vegetal(?) pattern, gilt band at rim

not known

not identified

1

1

3

3

Totals

The pattern on cat. no. DD/583/0011 (Figure 94) has bunches of flowers below a linear background. Linear borders were produced prior to the early 1890s (Samford 1997: 18). These green transfer-printed floral patterns do not appear to be suitably complementary designs (e.g. cat. no. DD/599/0004 – Figure 95).

No. sherds

MNV

Up to two cups and two saucers are decorated with a sailing boat pattern (e.g. cat. no. DD/582/0008 – Figure 98), and constitute a matching set. Remains of another saucer with a vegetal pattern may have had the same pattern (cat. no. DD/553/0003 – Figure 99). This sailing-boat pattern, but in blue, was reported on cups and saucers from excavations at Parramatta Hospital, NSW, and dated from 1840 (Casey and Lowe Pty Ltd, Ceramic pattern reference list). Two further saucers with a pattern of triangles and stylised red flowers and leaves constitute a further matching set (see cat. no. DD/811/0015 – Figure 100). Stylised flowers were popular in the second half of the nineteenth century (Evans 1975: 152). These two patterns are not evidently complementary.

Brown transfer-printed patterns Three fragments with two different brown transfer-printed patterns were identified (Table 6.5). One cup, with a squat ear-shaped handle, and one saucer (cat. nos. DD/507.15/0119 and R/710/0015 – Figure 96) had the same symmetrical white dot-and-tulip border pattern, and so constitute a matching set. On each of these cup and saucer fragments, this vegetal pattern has the brown linear background near the edge of the rim, in the same position as it would have been on the marly on a matching plate. Samford argued (1997: 18) that linear patterns on the marly date 1820–91 (1997: 18), so this set was probably pre-1890 in date. Remains of another cup had a different vegetal pattern (cat. no. DD/556/0025 – Figure 97), but was not likely to have been complementary, because of its different brown colour.

Bone china Blue sprig pattern Three fragments from two bone china saucers decorated with a partial blue sprig were recorded from the OKH (Table 6.7). Because of the small size of these fragments and the limited remains of this decoration, it is not possible to discern whether the sprig pattern was Chelsea Sprig or Chelsea Grape, two different patterns which consist, respectively, of six equally spaced floral or grape sprigs. According to Brooks (2005: 42–43), these were both common on British and Australian sites from c.1820s through to the later nineteenth century. These remains are adequate to fit our definition of a small tea set.

Red transfer-printed patterns Among 13 fragments, comprising some seven teaware vessels, possibly three red transfer-printed patterns were identified (Table 6.6).

Table 6.5. Earthenware teaware vessels with brown transfer-printed patterns, probably dating prior to 1890. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Pattern

Rim diam. (inches) Profiles and handles

DD/507.15/0119

cup

alternating white dots and tulipshaped flowers on a brown linear pattern at rim, vegetal pattern below (parts of print missing)

not known

rolled rim; vertically straight-sided; squat 1 ear-shaped handle

1

R/710/0015

saucer

alternating white dots and tulipshaped flowers on a brown linear pattern at rim, vegetal pattern below

not identifiable

rolled rim

1

1

DD/556/0025

cup

voluted vegetal bands below a brown rim

3⅛

rolled rim; straightsided

1

1

3

3

Totals

68

No. sherds MNV

Teaware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead Table 6.6. Earthenware teaware vessels with red transfer-printed patterns, probably dating prior to 1890. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Pattern

DD/582/0008

cup

DD/592/0007

Rim diam. (inches)

Profiles and handles

No. sherds MNV

sailing boats in circular cartouche surrounded by coral/seaweed on exterior, 3⅛ seaweed pattern on interior

vertically straightsided, with everted rim

1

1

cup

sailing boats in circular cartouche surrounded by coral/seaweed on exterior, 3⅛ seaweed pattern on interior

not identified

1

1

DD/534/0026

saucer

sailing boats in circular cartouche surrounded by coral/seaweed on exterior, not known seaweed pattern on interior

not identified

2

1

DD/596/0015

saucer

sailing boats in circular cartouche surrounded by coral/seaweed on exterior, not known seaweed pattern on interior

not identified

1

1

DD/553/0003

saucer

vegetal pattern with ribbon, possibly same 5½ as sailing boat pattern

rolled, slightly everted 2 rim

1

DD/536/0012

saucer

triangles at rim and below a band of stylised red flowers and leaves

5½

not identified

4

1

DD/811/0015

saucer

triangles at rim and below a band of stylised red flowers and leaves

5½

rolled rim

2

1

13

7

Totals

Table 6.7. Bone china teaware vessels with blue Chelsea Sprig or Chelsea Grape pattern, probably dating prior to 1890. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Pattern

Rim diam

Profiles and handles

No. sherds

MNV

A02XVer/087/0016

saucer

Chelsea Sprig or Chelsea Grape

not known

rolled rim; rounded body

1

1

A02XVer/111/0016

saucer

Chelsea Sprig or Chelsea Grape

not known

rolled rim; rounded body

1

0

A10Wout/139/0015b

saucer

Chelsea Sprig or Chelsea Grape

not known

not identified

1

1

3

2

Totals

20 years in this homestead. However, there is notably a bare minimum number of vessels in each of these 10 matching sets, compared with the numbers of vessels in the later twentieth-century sets, discussed below. These limited numbers suggest that any perfectly matching tea sets during the earlier years of the homestead’s occupancy constituted mainly small ‘tête à tête’ sets (see chapter four, p. 38). Alternatively, as may have been more common prior to 1880, the homestead occupants may not have been very particular about mixing their teaware sets. It is perhaps noteworthy that, where identifiable, the cups all appear to have rolled rims (a straight rim with a rounded edge), and mainly vertically straight sides.

In summary, 10 small matching sets can be identified – among some 20 different transfer-printed patterns and one sponge-printed pattern on the earthenware teawares, and a blue Chelsea Sprig or Chelsea Grape pattern on bone china teawares – that are all probably pre-1890 in date. Interestingly, for each of blue, black, purple and red transfer-printed patterns, one matching set is most clearly identifiable, with evidence for a further set and of odd vessels in the same colour but in different patterns. Thus, four distinctive, differently coloured transfer-printed teaware sets can be identified, and, if not an accident of preservation, a seemingly conscious choice of colour range. It is tantalising to see the other similarly coloured vessels as forming complementary sets. For example, the black transfer-printed cups all have a similar vertical profile that would have perhaps made them seemingly similar. However, the patterns of the brown, green and red sets do not appear to be complementary. All these cups with printed patterns whose rim diameters can be identified are close in size to Berthoud’s average teacup size (see Table 4.2), although the black, green and red ones are notably smaller and could conceivably have been used for coffee. This assemblage implies that the homestead occupants had at least four differently coloured tea services, if not 10 differently decorated matching sets, during the first

1890–1955 The remains of 25 earthenware, 24 bone china and 34 porcelain vessels from OKH are datable after 1890 by their makers’ marks, or by the registration of the pattern. Earthenware Fragments from 20 earthen teaware cups and saucers and five teapots were identified at OKH that can be dated after 1890 (Table 6.8). 69

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 6.8. Earthenware teaware vessels with a refined white, cream, or dyed-body fabric, dated after 1890. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Pattern or fabric type

Maker’s mark

Rim diam. Profiles and handles (inches)

DD/556/0024 saucer

‘white and gold’

‘GREEN & CO LTD’

not known

DD/526/0001 cup

white body, clear glaze

DD/572/0007 cup DD/576/0031 saucer

plain ring base with ridge

No. MNV sherds 1

1

straight-sided, rounded ‘(flower?)/ EN[GLAND] not known lower body (in green)’

1

1

decoration not known

‘PHOENIX WARE’

not known vertically straight-sided

1

1

decoration not known

‘PHOENIX WA[RE]’

not known plain ring base

1

1

‘[TUSCA]N CHINA’

6¼

not identified

1

1

DD/576/0029 small plate Willow

6¼

not identified

2

1

DD/817/0017 small plate Willow

6¼

not identified

1

1

DD/570/0010 small plate Willow

DD/555/0009 cup

Wattle

4

slightly everted rim; straight sides with rounded body

1

1

DD/583/0010 saucer

Wattle

6¼

rolled rim; flaring body

1

1

DD/594/0002 saucer

Wattle

6¼

not identified

3

1

DD/804/0006 saucer

Wattle

6¼

rolled rim; flaring body

1

1

DD/522/0009a cup

cream body, clear glaze ‘[En]gland’

4

rounded

4

1

DD/521/0001 cup

cream body, clear glaze ‘Eng[land]/ [?]SP’

not known rounded

1

1

DD/522/0005 saucer

cream body, clear glaze

6¼

rolled rim; straight-sided 2

1

DD/524/0002 cup

pink dyed-body, clear glaze

3½

everted rim with rouletting; fluted upper 4 and rounded lower body: ear-shaped handle

1

DD/525/0001 cup

pink dyed-body, clear glaze

‘SPL/ ENGLAND’

3½

everted rim with rouletting; fluted upper 2 and rounded lower body: ear-shaped handle

1

DD/548/0025 cup

pink dyed-body, clear glaze

‘SP[H?] / ENGLAND’

not known not identified

DD/519/0001 cup

dark yellow dyed-body, clear glaze

DD/522/0008 cup

dark yellow dyed-body, clear glaze

‘SPL’

1

1

3¼

slightly fluted, flaring with rounded upper and 3 lower halves; ear-shaped handle

1

3¼

slightly fluted, flaring with rounded upper and 1 lower halves; ear-shaped handle

1

DD/548/0027 cup

dark yellow dyed-body, clear glaze

3¼

slightly fluted, flaring with rounded upper and 1 lower halves; ear-shaped handle

0

DD/525/0008 saucer

‘LABURNUM/ PETAL/ (rectangle dark yellow dyed-body, containing sailing clear glaze ship) GRINDLEY/ ENGLAND’

5¾

scalloped rim; rounded body, slightly fluted 1 upper section; plain base

1

Totals

34

70

20

Teaware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead ‘White and gold’ One white earthenware saucer fragment (cat. no. DD/556/0024) recovered from OKH has a gold tea-leaf pattern in the well (Figure 101) and a green base mark: ‘GREEN & CO LTD’, with a church (Figure 102). This English mark can be dated to the 1930s (Godden 1991: 290).

asymmetrical pattern featuring a combination of wattle and native fuchsia (e.g. cat. no. DD/555/0009 – Figure 107). This pattern was registered by the Doulton Pottery in 1892, but was later made by Australian potteries (Graham 2006: 15). The pattern name is also advertised, although not illustrated, in the Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd mail order catalogue (1909: 370). There are sufficient vessels in this pattern for it to be considered a set.

Plain white body, clear glaze

Plain cream body, clear glaze

A plain white cup with the word ‘ENGLAND’ as part of the maker’s mark was recovered from OKH. The maker has not been identified, but the word ‘England’ dates this vessel after 1891.

Remains of three plain cream-bodied earthenware vessels, of a fine fabric, were recorded at OKH. Two of the cups (cat. nos. DD/526/0001 and DD/521/0001) have base marks with the word ‘England’. The maker has not been identified but, again, the word ‘England’ dates these vessels after 1891. These cream-bodied vessels, a saucer and two cups, were of a different colour to the ‘plain white’ vessels, and fit our definition of a teaware set.

While these two earthenware ‘white and gold’ or plain vessels do not occur in adequate numbers to be considered sets, it is conceivable they formed parts of matching or complementary sets with undatable ‘white and gold’ or plain white earthenware sets, and/or complementary sets with the bone china and porcelain teaware sets discussed below.

Dyed-body, clear glaze Remains of three pink dyed-body cups with a clear glaze were recorded at OKH (e.g. cat. no. DD/524/0002 – Figure 108), and fit our definition of a matching set. One has an impressed base mark: ‘SPL/ ENGLAND’, which dates it post-1891. Six fragments from two cups (e.g. the near complete cup cat. no. DD/522/0008 – Figure 109) and one dark yellow earthenware dyed-body saucer (cat. no. DD/525/0008 – Figure 110) with a clear glaze were also recorded at OKH. These yellow vessels are all fluted on the upper section, and the saucer has a scalloped rim. The maker’s mark on the saucer identifies this set as Laburnum Petal, made by W. H. Grindley & Co., which can be dated 1936–54 (Godden 1991: 294). It is conceivable that these pink and yellow teawares formed part of a complementary dyed-bodied set, although they are slightly different in shape and rim mouldings and possibly considerably different in date.

Unknown decoration Two further white earthenware vessels – a cup and a saucer – do not have any decoration present on the recovered fragments. The bases of each have the maker’s mark: ‘PHOENIX WARE/ MADE IN ENGLAND/ T. F. & S. LTD’ (e.g. cat. no. DD/572/0007 – Figure 103), which can be dated between c.1910 and 1959 (Godden 1991: 257). Given our definition of a teaware set (see chapter four, p. 38), the same maker’s mark on these two vessels would identify them as a set, if they were both similarly decorated. If undecorated or gilded, it is conceivable that these two vessels were also parts of matching or complementary sets with undatable ‘white and gold’ or plain white earthenware sets, and/or a complementary set with similar bone china or porcelain teawares, as for the above two vessels.

Teapots

Transfer-printed

Remains of probably five earthenware teapots recorded at OKH are also datable after 1890, four of which are more specifically datable to the twentieth century (Table 6.9).

Three 6¼-inch plates, probably bread-and-butter plates, with the blue Willow pattern were recorded from OKH (e.g. cat. no. DD/570/0010 – Figure 104). One plate is marked ‘[TUSCA]N CHINA/ (crown with wing-like leaves either side)/ [MA]DE IN ENGLAND’ (cat. no. DD/570/0010 – Figure 105), and was manufactured by R. H. & S. L. Plant Ltd in the 1920s (North Staffordshire Pottery Industry, Pottery, A–Z of Stoke-on-Trent Potters). At least two of these plates had the same profile (see e.g. cat. no. DD/570/0010 – Figure 106) and decoration, the other fragment being too small to assess. These plates could have been replacements for an earlier pre-1890 Willow pattern set (see Table 5.1) and part of a breakfast or tea set that was in use throughout the occupation of the homestead.

One of these teapots with a red body and a mottled brown Rockingham-type glaze (cat. no. DD/822/0011 – Figure 111) has the mark ‘ENGLAND’, dating it after 1891. Three of the other teapots have a black glaze and red fabric, with hand-painted floral decoration (e.g. cat. no. DD/555/0008 – Figure 112) and a gold mark on the base: ‘S. JOHNSON … BRITANNIA POTTERY (in ring around figure of Britannia)/ No202195/ ENGLAND’, which dates to 1916– 31 (Godden 1991:357) (cat. no. DD/805/0003 – Figure 113). The fifth teapot (cat. no. DD/576/0017 – Figures 115 and 116) is in a cream fabric, with a hexagonal body, gilt and decal decoration and green base mark, ‘QUALITY’ (in banner)/ (dragon on globe) ARTHUR WOOD (in banner across globe)/ ENGLAND’, alongside an impressed mark

Remains of one cup and up to three saucers have the brown transfer-printed pattern identified as Wattle, an 71

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 6.9. Earthenware teapots, datable after 1890. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Fabric

Marks and decoration

Dim.

Sherd no. MNV

DD/822/0011

teapot

red body, mottled brown glaze

‘ENGLAND’

base 89 mm

2

1

DD/555/0008

teapot

enamelled hand-painted pattern below rim diam. red body, black glaze shoulder of yellow dots and yellow, white 90 mm; body and orange garlands of flowers diam. 145 mm

2

1

DD/558/0011

teapot

red body, black glaze

Preserved spout 1 l. 60.5 mm

1

DD/805/0003

teapot

gold printed: ‘S.JOHNSON … BRITANNIA POTTERY (in band red body, black glaze around seated Britannia)/ No202195/ ENGLAND’; white painted ‘C’ to side

Base diam. 130 mm

1

1

DD/805/0009

teapot

red body, black glaze

hand-painted yellow floral decoration at base of handle

Spout l. 90 mm

1

0

cream body

decal and gilt decoration on body, floral garland at shoulder; base mark: ‘QUALITY (in banner)/ (dragon on globe) ARTHUR WOOD in banner across globe/ ENGLAND’

Base diam. 85 mm

12

1

19

5

DD/576/0017

teapot

Totals

‘ENGLAND/ 36’, which dates to 1936 (Godden 1991: 683). We have interpreted the number ‘36’ as the year of making rather than as the volume of the teapot, as it is too large for this number to have indicated its size (see discussion in chapter four, pp. 41–42).

shield with a rising sun above (cat. no. DD/594/0008 – Figure 118), which can be dated 1900–13 (Godden 1991: 357); ‘PHOENIX/ ENGLISH/ CHINA’ (cat. no. DD/549/0005b – Figure 121) which can be dated 1910–59 (Godden 1991: 257); ‘[BLAIRS CH]INA/ [ENGLAND]’, which can be dated 1914–30 (Godden 1991: 80); ‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ GP & CO/ L. / MADE IN ENGLAND’ (e.g. cat. no. DD/525/0005 – Figure 119) which can be dated to 1924–40 (Godden 1991: 515); and ‘COLCLOUGH/ LONGTON/ ENGLAND/ BONE CHINA’ (e.g. cat. no. DD/510.09/0060 – Figure 122), which can be dated to 1935–37 (Godden 1991: 161). The placement and the numbers of gold lines on these various teawares are also different.

None of these teapots is a particular match for any of the post-1890 earthenware teaware cups, saucers or plates, nor for the bone china and porcelain ones discussed below. Also, while none of these is a particularly large teapot, all are probably what might be considered medium-sized (see discussion below for teapots in Table 6.27). If so, and if used together, the three black-glaze teapots could have been used for tea parties of quite large gatherings, of perhaps some 15 people at least. The gilding and the shape of the hexagonal teapot would seem more refined, suggesting that this relatively late teapot may have been used for seemingly more genteel occasions than any of the other teapots recorded at OKH.

The flaring, straight-sided shape of the cups is likely to be that known as ‘Minton’ (see Anthony Hordern and Sons 1912: 373 no. U 121), which has an ear-shaped handle. The Gladstone vessels may have been purchased as a matching set, according to our definition. That said, the Grafton cup, at least, may be of an earlier date, so it could conceivably have been part of a set from the first decade of the twentieth century, to which these later Gladstone vessels and other vessels were added in the following decades. The variations in the production of the different vessels and the different arrangements of their gold lines indicates that these vessels did not form a perfectly matching set, but may have constituted replacements bought at different times, over possibly up to 55 years, with an attempt to match these vessels according to shape, at least. Some of the bone china teawares without identifiable marks, discussed below, may also have formed part of this set.

Bone china ‘White and gold’ Remains of some 11 bone china teawares with remains of gilded decoration were recorded at OKH that can also be dated to the twentieth century by their maker’s marks (Table 6.10). These teawares comprise eight cups with flaring straight sides (e.g. cat. no. DD/508.03/0025b – Figure 114 – and cat. no. DD/521/0005 – Figure 117) and three saucers, two of which have plain rolled rims and rounded bodies (e.g. cat. no. DD/525/0005 – Figure 119). Despite their similar profiles, however, they were made by five different potteries. Their marks include the remains of: ‘GRAFTON CHINA/ A/ B J (in knot)/ & SONS/ ENGLAND’ in a

Plain, clear glaze Remains of six plain white bone china cups and five saucers were recorded at the OKH, with no evident gilding 72

Teaware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead Table 6.10. Bone china teaware vessels with ‘white and gold’ decoration, with marks dating to the twentieth century. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Maker’s mark

DD/594/0008

cup

‘GRAFTON CHINA/ gold line 20 mm 3⅓ A B J (in knot)/ & below rim SONS/ ENGLAND’

rolled rim; flaring straight sides; rounded at base edge; plain ring foot

1

1

DD/549/0005b

cup

‘PHOENIX/ ENGLISH/ CHINA’

evidence of gold not known line on body

rolled rim; flaring straight sided, rounded at base edge; 2 plain ring foot

1

DD/586/0034

cup

‘[BLAIRS CH]INA/ [ENGLAND]’

gold tea-leaf pattern in well

not known

straight sided, lower body rounded; plain ring foot

1

1

DD/508.03/0025b

cup

‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ … / MA[DE IN ENGLAND]’

gold line 20 mm not known below rim

rolled rim; flaring, straight sided; rounded base edge; plain ring foot

1

1

DD/521/0005

cup

‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ G.P gold line below & CO/ L./ MADE IN rim exterior ENGLAND’

3⅛

flaring straight-sided; rounded at base edge, earshaped handle

1

1

DD/525/0005

‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ G.P & saucer CO/ L./ MADE IN ENGLAND’

gilt-edged rim and gold line 20 mm below rim and gold tea-leaf in well

5½

rolled rim; rounded body

1

1

DD/535/0010

‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ saucer … / MADE IN ENGLAND’

gold line 20–22 mm below rim

6⅛

rolled rim; rounded body

1

1

DD/534/0009

saucer Gladstone china

gold line 20–22 mm below rim

6⅛

not identified

1

1

DD/510.09/0060a, cup b and c

‘COLCLOUGH LONDON ENGLAND BONE CHINA’ printed in black; ‘150’ written in gold

3 gold lines 5–6 mm from rim

3⅛–3½

slightly flaring, straight sides, 10 rounded at base edge

1

DD/572/0005

cup

‘COLCLOUGH’

gold number ‘41’ not known on base

straight-sided, rounded lower body

1

1

cup

‘COLCLOUGH/ LONGTON/ ENGLAND/ BONE CH[INA]’

gold number ‘41’ not known on base

straight-sided; rounded lower body

2

1

22

11

DD/573/0014

Gilding

Rim diam. (inches)

Totals

Profiles and handles

No. MNV sherds

a partial maker’s mark for ‘Colclough’ which can be dated 1935–37 (Godden 1991: 161). Three other fragments have partial marks: ‘GUARANTE … / MADE IN/ ENGLAND’; ‘… / … IV/ … ENGLAND’; and ‘… CHINA’; which would date them after 1891, and the former two to the twentieth century (see chapter four, p. 35). As these teawares are comparable to the twentieth-century ‘white and gold’ bone china, in both shape and makers’ marks, it is conceivable that they, and some without identified marks discussed below, complemented these gilded teaware sets, or formed a separate plain set. It is conceivable that some may have originally had gold lines that have worn off, either before or after discard. However, gold lines normally leave a shadow that was not observed on these vessels.

but with complete or partial makers’ marks that date them to the twentieth century (Table 6.11). All these teaware vessels comprise flaring, straight-sided cups and rounded saucers with simple rolled rims, and so have similar profiles to the ‘white and gold’ bone china teawares (Table 6.10). Unfortunately, none have evidence for their handles. However, their marks are also similar, and some identical: ‘GRAFTON… / A B J (in knot)/ MADE IN/ ENGLAND (in shield under rising sun)’, which can be dated 1900–13 (Godden 1991: 357); ‘BLAIRS CHINA/ ENGLAND’, which dates 1914–30 (Godden 1991: 80); ‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ G.P & CO/ L./ MADE IN ENGLAND’, dated 1924–40 (Godden 1991: 515); and

73

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 6.11. Plain white bone china teaware vessels, with marks dating to the twentieth century.* Cat. nos.

Vessel

Maker’s mark

Rim diam. (inches)

DD/804/0005b

saucer

‘GRAFTON …/ A B J (in knot)/ MADE IN/ ENGLAND’

not known

DD/805/0014

cup

‘BLAIRS CHINA/ ENGLAND’

not known

DD/541/0012

cup

DD/549/0008

Profiles

No. sherds

MNV

rolled rim, rounded body

2

1

straight-sided, rounded lower body

1

1

‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ G.P not known & CO/ L./ MADE IN ENGLAND’

flaring straight-sided; rounded at base edge

1

1

cup

‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ G.P not known & CO/ L./ MADE IN ENGLAND’

flaring straight-sided; rounded at base edge

1

0

DD/581/0001

cup

‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ G.P not known & CO/ L./ MADE IN ENGLAND’

flaring straight-sided; rounded at base edge

1

1

DD/820/0017

cup

Gladstone china

not known

flaring straight-sided; rounded at base edge

1

1

DD/822/0020

cup

Gladstone china

not known

flaring straight-sided; rounded at base edge

2

1

DD/822/0026

cup

Gladstone china

not known

flaring straight-sided; rounded at base edge

1

0

DD/508.11/0091

saucer

Gladstone china: ‘…/ G.P & CO/ L./ MADE IN ENGLAND’

not known

base only

1

0

DD/533/0012

saucer

‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ G.P not known & CO/ L./ MADE IN ENGLAND’

rounded body

1

1

DD/548/0013a

saucer

‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ G.P not known & CO/ L./ MADE IN ENGLAND’

rounded body

1

0

DD/548/0013b

saucer

‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ G.P not known & CO/ L./ MADE IN ENGLAND’

rounded body

1

1

DD/820/0025

saucer

‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ G.P not known & CO/ L./ MADE IN ENGLAND’

base only

1

0

DD/818/0020

saucer

Gladstone china

not known

base only

1

1

1

1

DD/816/0002

cup

‘COLCLOUGH’

not known

straight-sided, rounded lower body

DD/822/0015

cup

‘(crown?)/ GUARANTE …/ MADE IN/ ENGLAND’

not known

straight-sided, rounded lower body

1

0

DD/548/0021

cup

‘… CHINA’

not known

possibly flaring straightsided, rounded lower 2 body

0

DD/544/0007

saucer

‘…/ … IV/ …ENGLAND’

5⅞

thin-walled, ring foot with gully

1

1

21

11

Totals

* Some of the fragments in this Table have not been included in the MNV count because they are base fragments only, and other bone china rim fragments from the same dumps have been counted.

Fluted, clear glaze

Porcelain

A single cup and a single saucer with white fluted bodies were found at OKH (Table 6.12).

‘White and gold’ Besides gilded English bone china teawares, the remains of 10 gilded white-grey paste porcelain vessels were recorded at OKH that are datable to the twentieth century (Table 6.13).

This fluted cup (cat. no. DD/565/0010 – Figures 124 and 125) and fluted saucer (cat. no. DD/572/0006 – Figure 123) both have the mark ‘TUSCAN CHINA/ (winged crown)/ MADE IN ENGLAND’, which dates from the 1920s (North Staffordshire Pottery Industry, Pottery, A–Z of Stoke-onTrent Potters). These teaware vessels differ in shape from the rest of the ‘plain white’ bone china vessels and may have been part of a separate ‘tête à tête’ bone china tea set. The maker’s marks are of different colours, so these were not produced as a matching set.

The makers’ marks of these gilded porcelain teawares indicate that they were made in Czechoslovakian and Japanese potteries. The marks on base fragments from four cups and two saucers include: ‘VICTORIA/ crown/ CZECHO-SLOVAKIA’ (e.g. cat. no. DD/540/0003 – Figure 126) and ‘VICTORIA/ CHINA/ CZECHOSLOVAKIA’. 74

Teaware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead Table 6.12. Plain white bone china teaware vessels, with fluted bodies and makers’ marks dating to the twentieth century. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Maker’s mark

Rim diam. (inches)

DD/565/0010

cup

‘TUSCAN CHINA/ (winged crown)/ not known MADE IN/ ENGLAND’

DD/572/0006

saucer

‘TUSCAN CHINA/ (winged crown)/ 5½ MADE IN ENGLAND’

Profiles

No. sherds

MNV

fluted, rounded body; flat base with no foot

3

1

fluted, rounded

3

1

6

2

Totals

Table 6.13. Porcelain teaware vessels with ‘white and gold’ decoration, with marks dating to the twentieth century. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Maker’s mark

DD/544/0010

cup

DD/549/0002

Rim diam. (inches)

Profiles and handles

No. sherds MNV

gilt-edged rim and ‘VICTO[RIA]/ CHIN[A]/ gold line 4 mm CZECHOSLOV[AKIA]’ below rim

3⅛

not identified

6

1

cup

‘(crown)/ VICTORIA/ CHINA/ CZECHOSLOVAKIA’

gold line on body

not known

elongated rounded body

1

1

DD/818/0015a cup

‘VICTORIA/ (crown)’

gilt-edged rim and gold line 4 mm below rim

3⅛

simple rolled rim; finewalled rounded lower 2 body

1

DD/818/0015b cup

‘CZEC[HOSLOVAKIA]’

gilt-edged rim and gold line 4 mm below rim

3⅛

simple rolled rim; finewalled rounded lower 2 body

0

DD/540/0003

‘VICTORIA/ (crown)/ Czecho-Slovakia’

gold line 21 mm below rim and gold 4¾ tea-leaf pattern in well

plain rolled rim, rounded body, ring foot with gully

4

1

DD/548/0010b saucer

Victoria China, Czechoslovakia

gold line 22 mm below rim and tealeaf pattern in well

not identified

4

1

DD/818/0016

saucer

‘VICTORIA/ CHINA/ CZECHOSLOVAKIA’

three gold lines 4 mm below rim

5⅞

simple rolled rim; rounded body

2

1

DD/570/0014

cup

‘Nori[take]/ MADE IN JAPAN/ RADI[ANT]’

gilt-edged rim

not known

not identified

2

1

DD/817/0004a cup

‘[Nori]take’ (conjoins with DD/570/0014)

gilt-edged rim

not known

slightly everted rim; rounded body; ridged 2 foot and gully

0

DD/570/0017

saucer

‘Noritake/ (tree crest mark inside wreath)/ MADE IN JAPAN/ RADIANT’

gilt-edged rim

5⅞

simple rolled rim; rounded body; gully

1

1

DD/537/0011

saucer

‘[MA]DE IN/ [JA]PAN’

gold line 21 mm below rim

5½

everted rim, rounded, 1 thick-walled body

1

DD/588/0005

saucer

‘SUPERIOR/ QUALITY/ gold line around MADE IN JAPAN’ interior

6¼

round-bodied saucer with slightly everted rim

3

1

30

10

saucer

Gilding

Total

These were manufactured by Schmidt & Co. Porcelain Factory and can be dated 1918–39 (Kovel and Kovel 1986: 98). As well as different versions of these makers’ marks, these vessels all have slightly different arrangements of gold lines, indicating that they were not produced as a matched set. However, these Czech cups are seemingly all of relatively the same form, with a rolled rim and finewalled and rounded lower body, so they were conceivably purchased as a not quite matching set.

5½–6¼

Remains of four other gilded porcelain vessels have makers’ marks indicating they were made in Japan, after 1921 (see chapter four, p. 35). One cup and one saucer each have a green mark, ‘Noritake/ (tree crest mark inside wreath19)/ MADE IN JAPAN/ RADIANT’ (e.g. cat. no. DD/570/0017 19 This mark is the Morimura family crest, incorporating the Japanese symbol for ‘tree’, also known as the tree crest mark (Stitt 1974: 167, 201). Although Stitt does not call it Maruki, it is the same symbol.

75

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? – Figure 127), a design made in 1933 exclusively for the Commonwealth of Australia market (Noritake Collectors Guild 2001–09 – 1933, ‘Maruki inside of wreath’). The other two saucers have traces of the base mark ‘MADE IN JAPAN’, one including ‘SUPERIOR/ QUALITY/’, which cannot be more precisely dated than after 1921. The Japanese cups, some with everted rims, do not seem to be the same shape and thickness as the Czech ones, and some of the Japanese saucers also seem to have differently shaped, everted, rims from the Czech saucers. Given the likely difference in dates, of possibly up to two decades, these Japanese teawares may not have been in use at the same time as the Czech teawares.

no. DD/540/0003 – Figure 126) but do not appear to have the same rounded base profiles as the gilded ones, which have rounded bases. This again indicates that these Czech vessels were not produced as part of the same set. For the plain white Japanese Noritake cups with no evident gilding, though, it is conceivable the pattern name ‘Radiant’, as found in the ‘white and gold’ examples (see Table 6.13 and cat. no. DD/570/0017 – Figure 127), indicates that they had been gilded. Thus, observations imply that there were a number of differences in the production of these vessels, but that these differences were not uniform across the ‘white and gold’ and plain sets. It would therefore appear that these porcelain ‘white and gold’ and plain teawares at OKH were all purchased after 1918, but that there had been little attempt to precisely match the plain porcelain teawares with each other, or with ‘white and gold’ porcelain teaware or, indeed, with the bone china teawares.

Plain, clear glaze Remains of up to 15 white-grey paste porcelain cups and nine saucers with similar Czechoslovakian and Japanese twentieth-century makers’ marks, but without any evidence of gilding, were recorded at OKH (Table 6.14).

Probably post-1890 (Appendix 3a) For the remains of some 295 teaware vessels from OKH with no, or illegible, marks, it is not possible to identify them as either pre- or post-1890 types. Most of these are ‘white and gold’ or plain white vessels, though, and all the marked ‘white and gold’ and plain white earthenware, bone china and porcelain teawares from OKH are datable to the twentieth century. That is, none of the more than 60 marks recorded on these vessels are pre-1900, which implies that the unmarked cups and saucers discussed below probably also date to the twentieth century, or at least after 1890. It is conceivable, though, that some could date prior to 1900, because, although a few pre-1900 marks have been found on excavated bone china in Australia, marks are notably less common on teaware vessels in the nineteenth than in the twentieth century (see e.g. Ward 2002: 3). Also, while these unmarked teawares have similar profiles to the marked teawares datable to the twentieth century, unlike nineteenth-century plates, it is difficult to date cups through profiles alone. Berthoud (1990: ix–xix) has listed pre-1850 ‘cup and handle shapes’ in his ‘Quick Reference Guide’, but argued that, after that date, grouping is no longer possible, as the shapes become so diverse. Buckrell Pos has also suggested (2004: 63–64) that, from the midnineteenth century onwards, many earlier styles enjoyed a revival, which influenced the shapes of cups being produced during the period with which we are concerned. Despite these caveats, though, the notable similarity of numerous unmarked teaware vessels to those vessels that are datable after 1900, in fabric and decoration as well as in shape, suggests that these vessels may well have been parts of the same teaware sets, and so have had a similar date range.

Eight of these teaware vessels were produced in Czechoslovakia, and so date from 1918, and 16 in Japan, dating from 1921. The Czechoslovakian cups have slightly flaring, straight sides and rounded lower bodies, and one has a slightly everted rim. Of the 11 cups and five saucers made in Japan, two straight-sided cups with rounded lower bodies have remains of the green mark ‘Noritake/ (tree crest mark inside wreath)/ MADE IN JAPAN/ RADIANT’. Five further straight-sided cups, with everted rims and carinated lower bodies, and four round-bodied saucers, each with a ring foot with gully, were marked with a red base mark consisting of a logo ‘CA’, and ‘JAPAN’ (e.g. cat. no. DD/576/0020 – Figure 128). Another straight-sided cup with an everted rim and carinated lower body has a partial mark, ‘JAPAN’, and so may have been the same as these other five cups. Remains of a further three cups, two at least with rounded lower bodies, have a red base mark inside a shield, ‘SUPERIOR/ QUALITY/ MADE IN JAPAN’ (e.g. cat. no. DD/576/0021 – Figure 129). Most of these Czechoslovakian Victoria and Japanese marks on these plain white teawares essentially also occur on ‘white and gold’ porcelain vessels recorded at OKH, but there are differences. In the first instance, the red Japanese mark ‘CA (logo)/ JAPAN’ does not appear on any ‘white and gold’ porcelain teawares. The teawares with this mark also have different profiles from any of the ‘white and gold’ vessels, with an everted rim and carinated lower body. This indicates that they were manufactured as a different, probably undecorated set. While the same Czechoslovakian marks are found on teawares of both types with similar profiles, these marks vary in colour between the two sets. For example, the plain white Czechoslovakian cup (cat. no. DD/577/0004 – Figure 130) has a turquoise printed mark, and the ‘white and gold’ saucer (cat. no. DD/540/0003 – Figure 126) has the same mark, but in olive green. Furthermore, four saucers made by Victoria from Czechoslovakia with no apparent gilding have a ring foot with gully (i.e. comparable with gilded cat.

Earthenware ‘White and gold’ The remains of 15 ‘white and gold’ unmarked earthenware teawares, mainly rim and body fragments, were recorded from OKH (Table 6.15). 76

Teaware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead Table 6.14. Plain white porcelain teaware vessels, with marks dating to the twentieth century. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Maker’s mark

Rim diam. (inches)

Profiles and handles

No. sherds MNV

DD/532/0004

cup

‘… / CZECHO ...’

3⅛

slightly everted rim; finewalled, straight-sided

5

1

DD/545/0005

cup

‘(crown)/ VICTORIA/ CHINA/ CZECHOSLOVAKIA’

not known

slightly flaring, straight-sided, rounded lower body

2

0

DD/577/0004

cup

‘VICTORIA/ (crown)/ CzechoSlovakia’

not known

slightly flaring, straight-sided, rounded lower body

1

1

DD/584/0003

cup

‘VICTORIA/ (crown)/ CZECHOSLOVAKIA’

not known

slightly flaring, straight-sided, rounded lower body

4

1

DD/818/0014

cup

‘(crown)/ VICTORIA/ CHINA/ CZECHOSLOVAKIA’

not known

rounded lower body

1

1

DD/566/0014

saucer

‘(crown)/ VICTORIA/ CHIN[A]/ 5½ CZECHO …’

rolled rim; rounded body; ring 1 foot with gully and ridge

1

DD/566/0008

saucer

‘(crown)/ [VICT]ORIA/ [CHI] NA/ [CZECHOSLO]VAKIA’

5⅞

rounded body; flatter inner profile than DD/566/0014; no ridge on base

1

1

DD/807/0014

saucer

‘VICTORIA/ (crown)/ [CZECHOSLO]VAKIA’

not known

not identified

2

1

DD/510.08/0052 saucer

‘CZECH …’

not known

not identified

1

0

DD/811/0014

saucer

‘(crown)/ [VICTOR]IA’

not known

ring foot with gully and ridge

1

1

DD/816/0001

cup

‘Noritake/ (tree crest mark inside wreath)/ MADE IN JAPAN/ [R] ADIANT’

not known

straight-sided, rounded lower body

2

1

DD/817/0001

cup

‘Noritake/ (tree crest mark inside wreath)/ MADE IN JAPAN/ [R] ADIANT’

not known

straight-sided, rounded lower body

2

1

DD/570/0012

cup

‘CA (logo)/ JAPAN’

3⅛

everted rim; straight-sided, carinated body base

2

1

DD/576/0025c

cup

‘CA (logo)/ JAPAN’

not known

everted rim, straight-sided, carinated body base

3

1

DD/579/0012

cup

‘CA (logo)/ JAPAN’

3½

everted rim, straight-sided, carinated body base

1

1

DD/816/0005a

cup

‘CA (logo)/ JAPAN’

not known

everted rim; straight sides

1

1

1

1

DD/817/0006a

cup

‘CA (logo)/ JAPAN’

3½

everted rim; straight-sided, carinated body base

DD/552/0011

cup

‘JAPAN’

3½

everted rim; straight sided, carinated body base

4

1

DD/570/0009

saucer

‘CA (logo)/ JAPAN’

6⅛

simple rolled rim; rounded body; ring foot with gully

2

1

DD/576/0020

saucer

‘CA (logo)/ JAPAN’

6⅛

simple rolled rim; rounded body; ring foot with gully

1

1

DD/576/0042

saucer

‘CA (logo)/ JAPAN’

6¼

simple rolled rim; rounded body; ring foot with gully

1

1

DD/590/0006

saucer

‘CA (logo)/ JAPAN’

6¼

simple rolled rim; rounded body; ring foot with gully

1

1

DD/516/0004

cup

inside shield: ‘[SUPERIO]R/ not known [QUALIT]Y/ MADE I[N] JAPAN’

straight sided, rounded lower body

1

1

DD/535/0011a

cup

‘[SUPER]IOR/ QUALITY/ [MADE IN JA]PAN’

3⅛

rolled rim; fine walled, straight sided rounded lower body; ear- 2 shaped handle

1

DD/576/0011

cup

‘K G WARE/ SUPERIOR/ QUALITY/ MADE IN JAPAN’

not known

base only

1

1

DD/576/0021

saucer

‘SUPERIOR/ QUALITY/ MADE IN JAPAN’

not known

not identified

1

1

45

24

Totals

77

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 6.15. Earthenware teaware vessels with ‘white and gold’ decoration, probably dating after 1890. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Rim diam. (inches)

Profiles and handles

No. sherds

MNV

DD/531/0011

cup

3⅛

not identified

1

1

DD/533/0010

cup

3⅛

not identified

5

1

DD/543/0012

cup

3⅛

not identified

1

1

DD/813/0020a

cup

3½

straight-sided

1

1

DD/531/0004a

cup

c.4¾

not identified

2

1

A05/003/0043

cup

not known

straight-sided

1

1

AWVer/063/0229

cup

not known

rolled rim; slightly flaring straight sides

1

0

DD/806/0011

saucer

4¾

not identified

3

1

DD/548/0018b

saucer

5½

straight-sided

2

1

DD/576/0030a

saucer

5½

not identified

4

1

DD/811/0002

saucer

5½

slightly everted rim

1

1

DD/570/0005

saucer

6¼

straight-sided

2

1

DD/813/0019

saucer

6¼

rolled rim

1

1

DD/813/0020b

saucer

6¼

rolled rim

1

0

DD/556/0026

saucer

not known

straight-sided

1

1

DD/547/0012

saucer

not known

not identified

2

1

DD/548/0018d

plate

not known

not identified

1

1

30

15

Totals

Besides cups and saucers, these teawares include a plate with a gold line at the shoulder and evidence for gold tealeaf pattern in the well (cat. no. DD/548/0018d). With the exception of this plate, none of these vessel remains comprise bases or include evidence of makers’ marks, so it is conceivable that they were fragments from the same vessel as, or vessels similar to, the gilded saucer with a 1930s base mark or the vessels of unknown decoration dated from 1910 (cat. no. DD/556/0024 – Table 6.8 and Figures 101 and 102). While some of the profiles among the vessels in this group appear similar, where known, these vessels have various arrangements of gold lines (i.e. different numbers of lines and differently spaced lines), suggesting that they were probably not purchased as a single set. In addition, one of the cups (cat. no. DD/531/0004a) could have been a breakfast cup, while all the others are of teacup size.

Decaled

Plain, white body, clear glaze

‘White and gold’

Remains of some further 21 unmarked, plain white-bodied earthenware vessels – 12 cups and nine saucers – with no evidence of gilding, but all made from a fine-bodied fabric, were found at OKH (Table 6.16).

Remains of some 18 bone china cups, 14 saucers and two plates have evidence of gold decoration but little evidence for marked bases for dating (Table 6.18).

A fragment from an earthenware saucer with a pink and yellow floral decal pattern (cat. no. DD/525/0007 – Figure 132) was recorded (Table 6.17). This decaled saucer probably dates after 1890, and most likely to the early twentieth century (see Brooks 2005: 37). This one vessel is insufficient to identify a tea set, however. Of 258 porcelain vessels that probably date after 1890, only 218 have been identified as either bone china or hard-paste porcelain. The remaining 40 (Appendix 3b) are therefore not included in the following analyses. Bone china

These gilded bone china remains again include fragments that have, variously, gilt-edged rims and one or three differently spaced gold lines on the body, so they are not perfectly matched. Remains of one cup (cat. no. DD/546/0002) and one saucer (cat. no. DD/521/0006) each have a tea-leaf pattern in their well, the former with no base mark and the latter with an illegible mark. Many of these cups and saucers appear to have comparable profiles to the marked ‘white and gold’ bone china teawares (Table 6.10), and two cups, at least, also have

These vessels could conceivably have, again, been part of a set, or sets, with the plain earthenware cups marked ‘Phoenix’ (e.g. cat. no. DD/572/0007 – Table 6.8 and Figure 103), or, indeed, with the gilded earthenware or gilded or plain bone china and porcelain teawares. One cup has straight vertical sides and is seemingly of mug form (e.g. cat. no. DD/576/0038 – Figure 131), and was possibly used differently, perhaps for drinking hot chocolate (see chapter two, p. 19). 78

Teaware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead Table 6.16. Plain white earthenware teaware vessels, probably dating after 1890. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Rim diam. (inches)

Profiles and handles

No. sherds MNV

DD/527/0002

cup

3⅛

rolled rim, straight-sided; slightly thicker fabric than DD/576/0038

1

1

DD/576/0038

cup

3⅛

rolled rim; vertically straight-sided; ear-shaped handle

2

1

DD/813/0008a

cup

3⅛

interior of rim everted; straight-sided

4

1

DD/813/0008b

cup

3⅛

interior of rim everted; straight-sided

3

1

DD/818/0026

cup

3⅛

slightly everted rim; straight-sided

1

1

DD/556/0020

cup

3⅛

not identified

1

1

DD/539/0005a

cup

c.3⅛

interior of rim everted; straight-sided

1

1

DD/811/0025

cup

4

interior of rim everted; straight-sided

1

1

DD/813/0011

cup

not known

interior of rim everted; straight-sided

6

0

DD/530/0002

cup

not known

not identified

2

1

DD/533/0007b

cup

not known

not identified

1

0

DD/536/0004b

cup

not known

not identified

1

1

DD/548/0028

cup

not known

not identified

1

1

DD/576/0025a

cup

not known

not identified

1

0

DD/589/0006

cup

not known

not identified

1

1

DD/579/0018b

saucer 4

slight ridge at back of rim

2

1

DD/558/0012

saucer 4¾

not identified

1

1

DD/813/0008c

saucer 5½

rim more everted than DD/813/0008d

2

1

DD/545/0012e

saucer 5½

not identified

3

1

DD/576/0030b

saucer 5½

not identified

1

0

DD/813/0008d

saucer 5⅞

everted rim and slight ridge at back of rim

3

1

DD/593/0015

saucer 6¼

not identified

1

1

A10Wout/139/0015a

saucer not known

not identified

1

1

DD/536/0004e

saucer not known

not identified

1

0

DD/536/0007e

saucer not known

not identified

5

0

DD/547/0008c

saucer not known

slight ridge at back of rim

1

1

DD/820/0034

saucer not known

not identified

2

1

50

21

Totals

Table 6.17. Decaled earthenware teaware vessel, probably dating after 1890. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Pattern or fabric type

Rim diam. (inches)

Profiles and handles

No. sherds

MNV

DD/525/0007

saucer

pink and yellow floral decal pattern

not known

not identified

1

1

1

1

Totals

Two of the cups have evidence of ear-shaped handles. At least one of these (cat. no. DD/508.02/0015 – Figure 133) has a more vertical profile than other bone china cups, and is similar to the plain white earthenware cups (i.e. cat. nos. DD/572/0007 – Figure 103 – and DD/576/0038 – Figure 131), the former of which has a ‘Phoenix’ mark, dating it from 1910. At least 10 of the saucers have a rounded profile, two others have an everted rim, and another three have flaring profiles. These saucers, in particular, do not therefore form a coherent set, but some of their profiles reflect those of the plain bone china with twentieth-

ear-shaped handles, as occur in the Minton type and as are found among these marked bone china teawares. It is, therefore, very likely that most, if not all, of these vessels are part of the same complementary set and date to the twentieth century. Plain, clear glaze Remains of some eight plain bone china cups and 21 saucers from OKH likewise have no recorded evidence of makers’ marks (Table 6.19). 79

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 6.18. ‘White and gold’ bone china, probably dating after 1890. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Rim diam. (inches)

Profiles and handles

No. sherds

MNV

DD/507.05/0031

cup

3⅛

not identified

1

1

DD/510.13/0087

cup

3⅛

not identified

3

1

DD/548/0012c

cup

3⅛

flaring sides

1

0

DD/548/0020

cup

3⅛

flaring sides

3

1

DD/549/0005a

cup

3⅛

not identified

1

1

DD/549/0011

cup

3⅛

not identified

2

1

DD/556/0030

cup

3⅛

flaring sides

1

1

DD/586/0025a

cup

3⅛

not identified

1

0

DD/818/0017

cup

3⅛

not identified

4

1

DD/819/0003

cup

3⅛

not identified

1

1

DD/820/0051

cup

3⅛

slightly flaring, straight-sided, rounded at base edge

1

1

DD/822/0017

cup

3⅛

ear-shaped handle

1

1

DD/822/0019a

cup

3⅛

not identified

7

1

DD/822/0033

cup

3⅛

not identified

1

1

DD/565/0009

cup

3½

rolled rim

1

1

DD/572/0003

cup

3½

slightly flaring, straight-sided; rounded at base edge

2

1

DD/816/0005b

cup

3½

not identified

7

1

DD/556/0013

cup

4

not identified

3

1

DD/546/0002

cup

not known

rounded at base edge

1

1

DD/549/0001

cup

not known

not identified

1

0

DD/586/0039

cup

not known

not identified

1

0

DD/818/0019

cup

not known

rounded lower body; ear-shaped handle

1

1

DD/536/0016

saucer

4¾

rolled rim; rounded profile

1

1

DD/548/0012d

saucer

4¾

not identified

1

1

DD/539/0010

saucer

5⅛

rolled rim; flaring, rounded body

1

1

DD/541/0003a

saucer

5½

rolled rim; flaring, rounded body

2

1

DD/556/0009

saucer

5½

not identified

1

1

DD/596/0017

saucer

5½

not identified

1

1

DD/805/0034

saucer

5½

everted rim; flaring profile

1

1

DD/820/0035g

saucer

5½

everted rim; flaring profile

2

1

DD/548/0010a

saucer

6¼

not identified

2

1

DD/566/0018

saucer

6¼

rolled rim

1

1

A02Ver/038/0058a

saucer

not known

not identified

2

1

AWVer/025/0039

saucer

not known

rolled rim; rounded profile

4

1

DD/508.15/0122

saucer

not known

rolled rim; rounded body

1

1

DD/508.16/0130

saucer

not known

rolled rim; rounded body

1

0

DD/521/0006

saucer

not known

not identified

1

1

DD/586/0023

plate

6¼

not identified

2

1

DD/562/0001

plate

6⅔–7⅛

not identified

Totals

3

1

72

34

Porcelain

century base marks (Table 6.11), and are likely to be part of the same complementary set.

‘White and gold’

Decaled

Remains of some 37 ‘white and gold’ porcelain cups, 37 saucers, and four plates recorded at OKH have gilded decoration but no identifiable makers’ marks (Table 6.21).

A single bone china cup with a red decal was recovered from OKH (cat. no. A02Ver/056/0099 – Figure 134; Table 6.20). 80

Teaware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead Table 6.19. Plain white bone china, probably dating after 1890. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Rim diam. (inches)

Profiles and handles

No. sherds

MNV

DD/817/0006b

cup

2¾

ear-shaped handle

3

1

DD/543/0013c

cup

3⅛

not identified

2

1

DD/543/0013e

cup

3⅛

not identified

3

0

DD/543/0020

cup

3⅛

not identified

3

0

DD/544/0004d

cup

3⅛

not identified

3

1

DD/547/0008b

cup

3⅛

not identified

5

1

DD/820/0035b

cup

3⅛

not identified

6

1

DD/820/0035c

cup

3⅛

not identified

3

0

DD/822/0034

cup

3⅛

not identified

1

0

DD/508.02/0015

cup

3½

vertically straight sides; ear-shaped handle

2

1

DD/548/0018c

cup

c.3½

not identified

1

1

DD/822/0025a

cup

4

not identified

1

1

DD/544/0004e

saucer

4¾

rolled rim; fine-walled; straight flaring profile

4

1

DD/548/0005a

saucer

4¾

rolled rim; rounded profile

6

1

DD/595/0005a

saucer

4¾

rolled rim; rounded profile

6

1

DD/805/0032b

saucer

4¾

not identified

3

1

DD/811/0018

saucer

4¾

rolled rim; rounded profile

2

1

DD/822/0023

saucer

4¾

rolled rim; rounded profile

1

1

DD/822/0028

saucer

4¾

rolled rim; rounded profile

1

0

DD/533/0013

saucer

5½

rolled rim; rounded profile

1

0

DD/535/0024a

saucer

5½

rolled rim; rounded profile

3

1

DD/536/0007d

saucer

5½

rolled rim; fine-walled; straight, flaring profile

4

0

DD/586/0037

saucer

5½

rolled rim; rounded profile

1

1

DD/596/0010

saucer

5½

not identified

1

1

DD/804/0005c

saucer

5½

rolled rim; rounded profile

1

0

DD/809/0009a

saucer

5½

rolled rim; rounded profile

4

1

DD/820/0035a

saucer

5½

everted rim

4

1

DD/818/0022

saucer

c.5½

rolled rim; all with slightly different profiles

6

3

DD/521/0003

saucer

5¾

rolled rim; rounded profile

3

1

DD/576/0022

saucer

6⅛

rolled rim; rounded profile

1

1

DD/509.16/0174

saucer

not known

everted rim

1

1

DD/536/0007c

saucer

not known

rolled rim, fine-walled; straight flaring profile

2

1

DD/547/0008a

saucer

not known

not identified

3

1

DD/809/0014a

saucer

not known

slightly different profile from those of DD/818/0022

3

1

DD/820/0035f

saucer

not known

rolled rim; rounded profile; slight ridge at back of rim

2

1

96

29

Totals Table 6.20. Bone china decaled teaware vessel probably dating after 1890. Cat. no.

Pattern or fabric type

Vessel

A02Ver/056/0099

cup

Bone china, red decal not known

Rim diam. (inches)

Included with these ‘white and gold’ porcelain teawares are four plates, of which cat. no. DD/555/0012 (Figure 135) is of a different shape and has a red mark on the base ‘No. 27/ Australi[a]’. The maker, origin or date of this plate has not been identified. It may have been made in Australia, however it may have been made elsewhere, using ‘Australia’

Profiles and handles

No. sherds MNV

fine-walled

1

1

as the pattern name (see chapter four, p. 35). Nevertheless, because of its similarity to the other porcelain plates, cups and saucers, it is likely to be dated post-1890. A number of different profiles, types of rim and handles (see e.g. cat. no. DD/591/0003 – Figure 136) and wall thicknesses have been identified among both the cups and saucers. At least 81

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 6.21. Porcelain teaware vessels with ‘white and gold’ decoration, probably dating after 1890. Cat. nos.

Vessel Rim diam. Profiles and handles (inches)

DD/586/0038

cup

c.2⅓–3⅛

No. MNV sherds

slightly everted rim; extremely fine-walled

1

1

DD/508.10/0081

cup

3⅛

rolled rim

1

1

DD/534/0029

cup

3⅛

handle with open bracket below

6

2

DD/535/0021

cup

3⅛

profile similar to DD/586/0021 but thinner-walled

2

1

DD/536/0015

cup

3⅛

slightly flaring, straight-sided, rounded at base edge

2

1

DD/541/0002a

cup

3⅛

plain rim; straight-sided; ear-shaped handle

3

1

DD/545/0007

cup

3⅛

rolled rim; flaring, straight-sided

1

1

DD/545/0012a

cup

3⅛

slightly flaring, straight-sided, rounded at base edge

3

1

DD/548/0012b

cup

3⅛

everted inner rim; thick-walled, similar to DD/537/0006

1

1

DD/554/0002

cup

3⅛

fine-walled, straight-sided as DD/805/0030

4

1

DD/566/0004

cup

3⅛

slightly flaring, straight-sided; block handle

1

1

DD/566/0015

cup

3⅛

not identified

1

0

DD/570/0018

cup

3⅛

rolled rim; straight-sided; ear-shaped handle

2

1

DD/586/0019

cup

3⅛

inner rim slightly everted; thick-walled

1

1

DD/586/0024

cup

3⅛

ear-shaped handle

2

1

DD/598/0006

cup

3⅛

inner rim slightly everted

1

1

DD/598/0008

cup

3⅛

inner rim everted; ring handle with open bracket below

1

1

DD/800/0005

cup

3⅛

not identified

1

1

DD/804/0008

cup

3⅛

inner rim everted; thick-walled, similar to DD/537/0006

1

1

DD/805/0030

cup

3⅛

fine-walled, straight-sided

1

1

DD/807/0005

cup

3⅛

rolled rim; thick-walled, straight-sided

1

1

DD/807/0016

cup

3⅛

not identified

2

1

DD/814/0006

cup

3⅛

rolled rim; voluted ear-shaped ring handle with open bracket

1

1

DD/814/0012

cup

3⅛

slightly flaring, straight-sided, rounded at base edge

1

1

DD/809/0005

cup

3⅓

not identified

1

1

DD/822/0009

cup

3⅓

inner rim everted; thick-walled, straight-sided, slightly flaring with rounded 1 lower body; ring handle with open bracket

1

DD/539/0007

cup

3½

ring handle

1

1

DD/541/0009

cup

3½

not identified

2

1

DD/586/0021

cup

3½

inner rim everted; ring handle with open bracket

1

1

DD/820/0018

cup

3½

straight-sided, slightly flaring with rounded base

1

1

DD/537/0006

cup

4

inner rim everted; thick-walled, straight-sided, slightly flaring with rounded 2 lower body; ring handle with open bracket

1

DD/822/0032

cup

4

inner rim everted; similar to DD/537/0006

1

1

DD/508.03/0025a cup

not known not identified

1

1

DD/508.04/0029

cup

not known rolled rim; thick walled, vertically straight-sided with rounded lower body

1

1

DD/574/0010

cup

not known rounded body; ear-shaped handle

1

1

DD/591/0003

cup

slightly everted rim; fine-walled, straight-sided with rounded base; voluted not known ear-shaped ring handle with open bracket

2

1

DD/807/0006

cup

not known not identified

1

0

DD/822/0019b

cup

not known rolled rim; straight-sided

1

1

DD/813/0016a

saucer 4

everted rim; fine-walled, flaring

2

1

DD/510.12/0082

saucer 4¾

rolled rim; fine-walled

1

1

DD/545/0009

saucer 4¾

everted rim; rounded body, same as DD/536/0009

2

1

DD/818/0023

saucer 4¾

not identified

1

1

DD/543/0013d

saucer 5⅛

rolled rim; flaring

1

1

82

Teaware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead Cat. nos.

Vessel Rim diam. Profiles and handles (inches)

No. MNV sherds

DD/545/0012c

saucer 5⅛

rolled rim; flaring

1

1

DD/800/0004

saucer 5⅛

not identified

3

1

DD/820/0033

saucer 5⅛

inner rim everted; finer rim than DD/818/0016

2

1

DD/809/0008

saucer 5⅓

everted rim; ring foot, no gully

1

1

DD/531/0004f

saucer 5½

everted rolled rim; flaring

1

1

DD/541/0003b

saucer 5½

rolled rim, rounded body; ring foot; no gully

1

1

DD/545/0008

saucer 5½

everted rim; double ridged foot, no gully

1

1

DD/558/0007a

saucer 5½

everted rim; rounded body; ridged foot

4

1

DD/566/0007b

saucer 5½

rolled rim

1

1

DD/576/0024a–d saucer 5½

everted rim; rounded body; ridged foot and shallow gully, similar to DD/536/0009 but more rounded

14

1

DD/593/0007b

saucer 5½

rolled rim

2

1

DD/594/0003

saucer 5½

widely everted rim; rounded body

3

1

DD/594/0012

saucer 5½

everted rim

1

1

DD/801/0019

saucer 5½

everted, slightly ridged rim

2

1

DD/805/0016

saucer 5½

rolled rim; rounded profile

2

1

DD/811/0001

saucer 5½

slightly everted rim

1

1

DD/811/0003

saucer 5½

rolled rim; flaring body

1

1

DD/813/0016b

saucer 5½

everted rim; flaring body

4

1

DD/817/0004b

saucer 5½

not identified

1

1

DD/817/0012

saucer 5½

rolled rim; straight-sided

2

1

DD/817/0009

saucer 5½?

slightly everted rim

1

0

DD/536/0009

saucer 5⅔

everted rim; rounded body; ridged foot and shallow gully

5

1

DD/805/0002a and b

saucer 5¾

no gully, similar to DD/545/0006

2

2

DD/545/0006

saucer 5⅞

no gully

1

1

DD/805/0018

saucer 5⅞

not identified

2

1

DD/533/0009

saucer not known not identified

1

1

DD/548/0018a

saucer not known not identified

2

1

DD/548/0023

saucer not known not identified

1

1

DD/558/0007c

saucer not known not identified

1

1

DD/558/0014a

saucer not known everted rim; rounded body

1

1

DD/805/0032a

saucer not known slightly everted rim

3

1

DD/807/0015

saucer not known not identified

2

1

DD/555/0012

plate

c.5½

fluted and scalloped rim

1

1

DD/801/0020

plate

6⅔

not identified

2

1

DD/556/0011

plate

7⅛

not identified

1

1

flaring rim; rounded shoulder

DD/825/0001

plate

7⅛

DD/556/0012

plate

not known not identified

Totals

seven unmarked cups are thick-walled, a trait not found in the marked ‘white and gold’ porcelain cups. At least nine cups have inner everted rims and six have rolled rims. The cups with inner everted rims have one gold line below the rim (e.g. cat. no. DD/822/0009 – Figure 137), all at different distances from the rim, a decoration type found on cups of other shapes from OKH. It is, again, quite likely that these largely unmarked ‘white and gold’ porcelain teawares were

2

1

1

0

142

78

part of a complementary set with the marked ones (Table 6.13). Plain, clear glaze Remains of some 29 plain white, grey-paste porcelain cups and 36 saucers from OKH have no evidence of identifiable makers’ marks (Table 6.22). 83

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 6.22. Plain white porcelain teaware vessels, probably dating after 1890. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Rim diam. (inches)

Profiles and handles

No. sherds

MNV

DD/514/0004a

cup

3⅛

thin rolled rim; thick-walled; straight-sided

3

1

DD/532/0001

cup

3⅛

slightly everted rim; fine-walled, straight-sided; ear-shaped handle

5

1

DD/533/0007a

cup

3⅛

thin rolled rim; thick-walled, straight-sided

1

1

DD/537/0004

cup

3⅛

thin rolled rim; thick-walled, straight-sided

3

1

DD/544/0013a

cup

3⅛

thin rolled rim; thick-walled, straight-sided

4

1

DD/548/0012a

cup

3⅛

thin rolled rim; thick-walled, straight-sided

1

1

DD/552/0003

cup

3⅛

rolled rim; fine-walled, straight-sided

1

1

DD/556/0023

cup

3⅛

not identified

1

1

1

1

DD/563/0005

cup

3⅛

thin rolled rim; thick-walled, straight-sided with rounded at base edge

DD/565/0008

cup

3⅛

thin rolled rim; thick-walled, straight-sided; block handle

1

1

DD/570/0006

cup

3⅛

rolled rim; fine-walled; straight-sided

1

1

DD/580/0008

cup

3⅛

everted rim

1

1

DD/586/0018a

cup

3⅛

rolled rim; fine-walled, straight-sided

1

1

DD/586/0018b

cup

3⅛

rolled rim; fine-walled, straight-sided

1

0

DD/586/0018c

cup

3⅛

rolled rim; fine-walled, straight-sided

1

0

DD/598/0010

cup

3⅛

rolled rim; thick-walled, straight-sided

3

1

DD/599/0003

cup

3⅛

slightly everted rim; thick-walled, straight-sided

2

1

DD/805/0020

cup

3⅛

rolled rim; thick-walled, straight-sided

4

1

DD/805/0033

cup

3⅛

thin rolled rim; thick-walled, straight-sided

1

0

DD/807/0017

cup

3⅛

thin rolled rim; thick-walled, straight-sided

3

1

DD/809/0021

cup

3⅛

thin rolled rim; thick-walled, straight-sided

1

1

DD/822/0022

cup

3⅛

everted rim; fine-walled; ear-shaped handle

1

1

DD/805/0008

cup

3¼

rolled rim; thick-walled, straight-sided; ring handle with open bracket below

2

1

DD/535/0020

cup

3½

thin rolled and slightly everted rim; fine-walled, straight-sided

1

1

DD/545/0011

cup

3½

everted rim; fine-walled; ear-shaped handle

1

1

DD/555/0007

cup

3½

thin rolled rim; thick-walled, straight-sided; ring handle with open bracket

1

1

DD/551/0002

cup

4

slight ridge either side of rim; thick-walled; straight-sided

1

1

DD/597/0001a

cup

4

thin rolled rim; thick-walled, straight-sided

2

1

DD/531/0004d

cup

not known

slight ridge either side of rim; thick-walled; straight-sided

1

1

DD/535/0011b

cup

not known

thin rolled rim; thick-walled

1

1

DD/591/0002

cup

not known

slightly everted rim; straight-sided; ear-shaped handle

3

1

Y/602/0033

cup, small not known (demitasse?)

small ear-shaped handle

1

1

DD/540/0004b

saucer

5⅛

slightly everted rim, rounded, flaring body

3

1

DD/543/0018

saucer

5⅛

everted rim; ring foot, no gully

1

1

DD/558/0009

saucer

5⅛

slightly everted rim, rounded, flaring body

1

1

DD/558/0014b

saucer

5⅛

slightly everted rim, rounded, flaring body

3

0

DD/566/0009a

saucer

5⅛

rolled rim; rounded body; raised outside foot, no gully

1

1

DD/576/0025e

saucer

5⅛

ridged foot, with gully

2

1

DD/801/0009

saucer

5⅛

everted rim

1

1

DD/805/0006

saucer

5⅛

slightly everted rim; ridged foot, no gully

1

1

DD/558/0002

saucer

5⅛–5½

slightly everted rim; rounded, flaring body

2

1

DD/566/0011

saucer

5⅛–5½

ridged foot, with gully

1

1

DD/576/0025b

saucer

c.5⅛–5½

slightly everted rim; rounded, flaring body

2

1

84

Teaware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead Cat. nos.

Vessel

Rim diam. (inches)

Profiles and handles

No. sherds

MNV

DD/509.08/0078 saucer

5½

everted rim; fine-walled, flaring body

1

1

DD/510.11/0076 saucer

5½

rolled rim

1

1

DD/531/0004e

saucer

5½

everted rim; flaring body

1

1

DD/533/0015

saucer

5½

rolled rim

1

1

DD/536/0007a

saucer

5½

slightly everted rim; very fine-walled, straight-sided

2

1

DD/539/0004

saucer

5½

rolled rim

1

1

DD/544/0008

saucer

5½

rolled rim

1

1

DD/544/0018

saucer

5½

rolled rim, raised outside foot, no gully

1

1

DD/548/0005b

saucer

5½

rolled rim

3

1

DD/548/0005c

saucer

5½

rolled rim

3

1

DD/566/0009b

saucer

5½

rolled rim; rounded body; raised outside foot, no gully

1

1

DD/593/0007a

saucer

5½

rolled rim; fine-walled

1

1

DD/596/0013a

saucer

5½

everted rim; flaring body

1

1

DD/800/0001

saucer

5½

everted rim; thick-walled, flaring, rounded body

2

1

DD/800/0002

saucer

5½

everted rim; fine-walled, flaring body

3

1

DD/820/0046

saucer

5½

rolled rim, raised outside foot, no gully

1

1

DD/570/0011

saucer

5½–5¾

ridged foot with plain gully

1

1

DD/594/0005

saucer

5¾

ridged ring foot with no gully

2

1

DD/539/0006a

saucer

5⅞

rolled rim, ring foot with gully and ridge; similar to DD/566/0014 but flatter inner profile

1

1

DD/565/0007

saucer

5⅞

rolled rim; ring foot with gully; similar to DD/566/0014 but no ridge 5 on base and flatter inner profile

1

DD/590/0008b

saucer

5⅞

not identified

1

1

DD/509.07/0066 saucer

6¼

rolled rim; rounded body

1

1

DD/590/0008a

saucer

6¼

rolled rim; rounded body

1

1

DD/594/0007

saucer

6¼

ridged foot

3

1

DD/806/0010

saucer

6¼

rolled rim; rounded body

7

1

DD/593/0010

saucer

not known

ring foot with gully

1

0

DD/547/0007a

saucer

not known

not identified

2

1

122

65

Totals

Decaled

Again, these remains may be from similar vessels of plain white, grey-paste porcelain to those which do have datable base marks (see Table 6.14). Some have comparable profiles to some of the marked vessels, although it is notable that they are not necessarily exactly the same, and none would appear to have the carinated lower bodies of the Japanese plain white cups (e.g. cat. nos. DD/576/0025c and DD/579/0012 – Table 6.14). These similarities, but variations, again suggest that these vessels were probably part of a complementary set, probably purchased at different times, and probably during the second and third decades of the twentieth century. A notable exception here is the very small ear-shaped handle found in Building Y (cat. no. Y/602/0033 – Figure 138), which appears to be from a very small cup, possibly a demitasse and probably a quite different type of cup, found in what was likely to have been the Chinese gardener’s hut (see Allison 2003: 180).20

Remains of up to 11 porcelain vessels with seven different decal patterns have been recorded at OKH (Table 6.23). As noted in chapter four (p. 36), decaled porcelain was mass produced from the early twentieth century, so these teaware vessels probably date after 1890. Among these differently decorated, and often very fine, porcelain teawares, only the blue mottled saucers (e.g. cat. no. DD/534/0007 – Figure 139) and the gilded plate and saucer decorated with green and purple leaves and bluebells (e.g. cat. no. DD/571/0001 – Figure 140) would meet our definition of ‘tête à tête’ tea sets. These porcelain vessels also include a delicate bowl, possibly a sugar bowl, decorated with a Geisha Girl pattern, consisting of a blue band at the rim and a floral pattern with a kimono-clad woman (cat. no. DD/549/0015 – Figure 141), and the remains of a decorated and gilded porcelain teapot (cat. no. DD/516/0001 – Figure 142) which could

20 The identification of this fragment as Chinese porcelain in this earlier publication is erroneous.

85

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 6.23. Porcelain teaware vessels with decaled decoration, probably dating after 1890. Cat. nos.

Vessel

Pattern or fabric type

Rim diam. (inches)

Profiles and handles

No. MNV sherds

DD/571/0001 saucer

porcelain, decal, gilded, green and 5½ purple pattern of leaves and bluebells

rolled rim; rounded body

3

1

DD/596/0012 plate

porcelain, decal, gilded, green and 8 purple pattern of leaves and bluebells

not identified

1

1

DD/534/0007 saucer

porcelain, decal, blue mottled pattern 4¾

slightly everted rim; round body

2

1

DD/556/0027 saucer

porcelain, decal, blue mottled pattern 5½

not identified

1

1

DD/555/0013 saucer

porcelain, decal, blue mottled pattern not known

not identified

2

1

DD/805/0012 cup

porcelain, decal, blue floral

2⅓

slightly everted rim; straight-sided 1

1

DD/570/0022 cup

porcelain, gilded, polychrome floral

3⅛

rolled rim; rounded

1

1

DD/576/0012 cup

porcelain, banded and decal, polychrome floral

3⅛

flaring everted rim; vertically straight body

1

1

DD/544/0005 cup

porcelain, moulded, green pattern

not known

not identified

1

1

DD/549/0015 sugar bowl? porcelain, decal, figurative

3⅛

everted rim; rounded

3

1

DD/516/0001 teapot

3⅓

everted flaring shoulder

2

1

18

11

porcelain, floral decal and gilded

Totals

conceivably have formed a mismatched set with some of the porcelain cups and saucers.

DD/594/0008, and saucer, cat. no. DD/804/0005b) were of a type definitely produced during the first two decades of the twentieth century (see Tables 6.10 and 6.11). Another three bone china cups (marked ‘PHOENIX’ and ‘BLAIR’) were possibly produced in the first two decades of the twentieth century, while the Czech porcelain teawares date after 1918, and the Japanese porcelain after 1921, as none of the latter vessels have the earlier mark ‘Nippon’ (see chapter four, p. 35).

Summary of post-1890 and probably post-1890 teawares In summary, recorded at OKH and definitely dating after 1890, and mostly after 1900, are the remains of some 16 decorated or plain earthenware cups, saucers and small plates that make up five main separate sets in transfer-printed patterns or coloured body types (Willow, Wattle, yellow-bodied Laburnum Petal, cream-bodied and pink-bodied). Fluted bone china vessels and further porcelain teawares in two decaled patterns may also have formed parts of post-1890 tea sets, while another decaled earthenware saucer, a decaled bone china cup and four decaled porcelain cups in four different patterns provide tantalising evidence for further potential decorated sets. However, all these decorated post-1890 teawares are in small quantities and would either have constituted several very small sets or have been parts of larger complementary and mismatched tea sets. By contrast, some 58 ‘white and gold’ and plain white earthenware, bone china and porcelain cups and saucers were recorded at OKH, with markers’ marks that definitely date them after 1890, excluding the fluted teawares (Table 6.12). A further 242 such vessels are unmarked, but have comparable forms to the marked vessels, to indicate that they probably dated after 1890. Some five earthenware teapots can also be dated after 1890, and one decaled porcelain sugar bowl and one decaled porcelain teapot probably date after 1890.

There are numerous differing vessel profiles among these white teawares. However, while some profile forms are specific to a particular fabric, this does not apply to all profile forms, or to whether or not the vessels are gilded. For example, among the marked and therefore datable vessels, the bone china cups, whether gilded or not, appear to have two main shapes. They are flaring straight-sided or seemingly more vertically straightsided, with flaring being the most common. That is, both the marked Grafton cups (1900–13) and the Gladstone China cups (1924–40) (e.g. cat. no. DD/508.03.0025b – Figure 116) have more flaring sides and are rounded at the edge of the base, while both the Blairs (1914–30) and Colclough (1935–37) bone china cups (e.g. cat. no. DD/510.09/0060 – Figure 122) have more vertically straight sides and a more rounded lower body. This also applies to the porcelain teawares, although these would seem to have less flaring profiles and a greater range of different profiles. For example, among the cups marked ‘Victoria’ (1918–39), made in Czechoslovakia, both gilded and plain cups have flaring sides and rounded lower bodies. The porcelain cups and saucers made in Japan, marked ‘Superior’ (1921+) and ‘Noritake’ (1933) (see Tables 6.13 and 6.14), have slightly flaring straight sides and a rounded lower body, but the cups marked ‘CA’ (1921+) (see Table 6.14), also made in Japan, are more vertically straight-sided, with an everted rim and

‘White and gold’ and plain white teawares Of the datable ‘white and gold’ and plain white vessels in the three fabrics – earthenware, bone china and porcelain – only one ‘white and gold’ bone china cup and one plain bone china saucer (i.e. the marked Grafton cup, cat. no. 86

Teaware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead a carinated lower body. A number of marked porcelain cups have everted rims, a feature also present in some marked earthenware cups (e.g. the pink-bodied vessels – e.g. cat. no. DD/524/0002 – Figure 108), but seemingly not in the bone china cups. It is, therefore, apparent that replacement vessels could have been bought in different fabrics. For example, the straight-sided and rounded lower-bodied profiles of both the marked Colclough bone china and the Japanese Superior and Noritake porcelain may have been replacements or extensions to an earlier Blairs bone china set which had a similar profile. Similarly, the Gladstone bone china and the Victoria porcelain both flare to a similar extent, and so may have comprised a complementary replacement set. It would also seem that, if profiles were of concern, gilded vessels may have been often mixed with plain white wares to make up extensive sets. In general, though, it would seem that these profiles were not particularly important in defining a set. The only profile form to appear only on bone china cups, but not in any other fabric or in unmarked bone china, is that of the fluted ‘Tuscan’ teawares that would seem to form a ‘tête à tête’ set (see Table 6.12, cat. nos. DD/565/0010 – Figures 124 and 125 – and DD/572/0006 – Figure 123).

If the ‘white and gold’ and plain white vessels, whether earthenware, bone china or porcelain, were to be considered two different sets, then the datable ‘white and gold’ set includes at least 12 cups and 10 saucers, but there are a further 61 cups, 59 saucers and seven small plates that are gilded and probably of a post-1890, and even a post1900, date. The datable plain set would therefore include 22 cups and 14 saucers, with a further 49 plain cups and 66 saucers probably datable to the twentieth century. The total numbers of these different types of likely twentiethcentury teawares can be seen in Table 6.24. For both the datable and undatable plain and ‘white and gold’ teawares, as well as in the combination of these, there are notably fewer earthenware vessels, more than twice as many bone china vessels, and then twice as many, again, porcelain vessels. Thus, there are twice as many ‘white and gold’ porcelain cups, saucers and plates over up to a 43-year period (c.1918–55) as there are ‘white and gold’ bone china teawares over conceivably a 65-year period. However, the total numbers of both plain and ‘white and gold’ cups and saucers across the three fabrics are relatively equal, suggesting perhaps that both types had been purchased in comparable quantities and that perhaps, as suggested above, these was indeed little evident distinction between these two sets, in terms of their fabric and whether or not they were gilded.

The range of profiles of the unmarked cups across the different fabrics are also similar to those of the marked cups. This implies that many of the unmarked vessels very probably have the same twentieth-century dates as the marked vessels. However, a number of the unmarked straight-sided porcelain cups are thicker-walled (see Table 6.21 – e.g. cat. no. DD/822/0009 – Figure 137).

Thus, the limited number of distinguishable sets of post1890 and particularly of twentieth-century date, and the quantity of vessels in what seems to be a very large and perhaps growing complementary ‘white and gold’ and plain set, compared with the numerous, but small and diverse, pre-1890 sets, demonstrates changes in the types of teadrinking occasions after 1890 and particularly after the First World War. The large, rather amorphous set, with apparently increasing numbers of vessels, notably in porcelain, and only some six or seven small, plain patterned and coloured earthenware, fluted bone china and decaled porcelain sets during this considerably longer period of occupation of OKH, suggests that there was less requirement for small ‘tête à tête’ tea-drinking and more need for larger, plainer sets. If there were ever occasions for ‘tête à tête’ tea-drinking and associated genteel display, then these smaller sets and perhaps some of the rather old sets may have been used, or perhaps some of the ‘white and gold’ teawares from the

Among the identifiable marked ‘white and gold’ and plain white vessels, there are remains of only two earthenware vessels (3 per cent) and 22 bone china ones (38 per cent), but 34 porcelain vessels (59 per cent). Among the unmarked vessels, the relative proportions of vessels in the different fabrics are not incomparable, with 36 earthenware (15 per cent), 63 bone china (26 per cent) and 143 porcelain (59 per cent), which further supports twentieth-century dates for the unmarked vessels. The further 40 porcelain teawares that could not be identified definitively as either bone china or hard-paste porcelain (Appendix 3b), and eight earthenware vessels that could not be identified as either tablewares or teawares (Appendix 4), would not change these figures to any great extent.

Table 6.24. Combined total of post-1890 and probably post-1890 plain and ‘white and gold’ teaware vessels. Set

Vessel

Earthenware

Bone china

Porcelain

Totals

‘white and gold’

cups

6

26

41

73

‘white and gold’

saucers

9

17

43

69

‘white and gold’

small plates

1

2

4

7

plain

cups

13

14

44

71

plain

saucers

9

26

45

80

38

85

177

300

Totals

87

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 6.25. Undated decorated earthenware teawares. Cat. nos.

Pattern or fabric type

Vessel Rim diam. (inches)

Profiles and handles

DD/525/0006

pale yellow dyed-body, clear glaze

saucer not known stepped ridges on inner surface

No. MNV sherds 2

1

DD/811/0009

white body, blue glaze

cup?

not known not identified

1

1

DD/595/0005b

white body, blue glaze

saucer not known not identified

1

1

DD/519/0002

white body, yellow glaze

saucer 6¼

2

1

polygonal, 10-sided(?)

DD/579/0016a

white body, pale yellow glaze

cup

not known horizontal ridging

1

1

DD/579/0016b

white body, pale yellow glaze

cup

not known horizontal ridging

1

0

DD/811/0020

white body, pale yellow glaze

saucer 5⅛

4

1

DD/536/0013a

Willow pattern

cup

not known everted rim; rounded body

5

1

DD/813/0018

Willow pattern

cup

not known everted rim

1

1

DD/536/0013b

Willow pattern

saucer not known not identified

1

0

DD/536/0013c

Willow pattern

saucer not known not identified

3

1

DD/534/0028

green floral pattern

cup

3⅛

not identified

1

1

not known not identified

horizontal ridging

DD/590/0005

green floral pattern

cup

1

1

DD/556/0028

green floral pattern

saucer 5⅞

rolled rim; rounded body

1

1

DD/586/0027

green floral pattern

saucer 5⅞

rolled rim; rounded body

3

1

A02XVer/118/0021 red and green banded pattern

cup

not known rolled rim; flaring

1

1

DD/818/0013

blue banded with transfer pattern

cup

3⅛

rolled rim; vertically straight-sided

1

1

DD/556/0010

possibly banded

cup

3⅛

rolled rim; vertically straight-sided

1

1

DD/509.15/0156

red banded pattern

saucer 6¼

not identified

1

1

32

17

Totals

were intended as complementary sets, perhaps with the above pale yellow dyed-body saucer, and/or the dark yellow dyed-body set (Table 6.8), and/or for the post-1890 probable blue dyed-body breakfast set (Table 5.26).

larger sets, if such occasions may have involved less genteel and perhaps more respectable display. Undated

Other decorated earthenware

Further teaware remains from OKH, including teapots, could have been manufactured and used either before or after 1890, or indeed over both of those periods.

There are two further transfer-printed patterns among the earthenware teaware from OKH that could have been produced either pre- or post-1890, each of which has sufficient vessel numbers to comprise a set.

Earthenware Some 17 decorated earthenware teawares recorded at OKH cannot be clearly dated to either the pre- or post-1890 period (Table 6.25).

Remains of two cups and one saucer decorated with Willow pattern could conceivably have been part of the post-1890 tea set that had bread-and-butter plates in Willow pattern (Table 6.8). However, the pattern on these cups and saucers is a little blurry, almost flow blue in parts, compared to the plates, and the transfer print on the cup has been torn during its application, as is evident from the white curved line at the rim (DD/536/0013a – Figure 144). These flaws possibly indicate that these teawares may have been seconds. Although Willow is a very common pattern, it is noteworthy that before 1890 the OKH occupants also had a Willow pattern set (see chapter five, Table 5.1) that probably pre-existed this particular homestead and any earlier residence at OKH. It is therefore conceivable that there was a Willow pattern set at the homestead, possibly a breakfast set or tea set, from its earliest occupancy, which was being added to until at least the 1920s.

Dyed-body, clear glaze Remains of one pale yellow dyed-body saucer with a clear glaze were recorded. This could have been part of a complementary set with the post-1890 cream, pink and yellow dyed-body vessels (Table 6.8). White body, coloured glaze One small blue-glazed cup fragment, one blue-glazed saucer fragment, and fragments from a 10-sided yellowglazed saucer were also recorded, as well as the remains of a cup and saucer with a pale yellow glaze and horizontal ridges on their bodies (cat. no. DD/811/0020 – Figure 143). It is conceivable that some of these coloured teawares 88

Teaware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead Further remains of two cups and two saucers feature an asymmetrical pattern of green transfer-printed daisylike flowers, snowdrops and possibly a butterfly (e.g. cat. no. DD/586/0027 – Figure 145 and cover image). Asymmetrical patterns were made from the 1870s onwards (Samford 1997: 19) and also feature in twentieth-century mail order catalogues (e.g. the ‘Marguerite Pattern’ – see Anthony Hordern and Sons 1913: 1243). Thus, this set could date to either period.

which was also present in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Remains which comprise at least one cup and one saucer with a blue band at the rim (e.g. cat. no. DD/817/0002 – Figure 147), a gilded and green-banded cup and saucer (e.g. cat. no. DD/809/0001 – Figure 148), and a red-banded cup and saucer, would meet our definition of small tea sets. However, some of the decoration on these banded teawares is rather carelessly applied, so they were perhaps more everyday teawares, perhaps all used together, and perhaps with some of the banded earthenware teawares, and so cannot be considered particularly genteel ‘tête à tête’ tea sets. None of these vessels had maker’s marks to suggest either a pre- or a post-1890 date.

Other decorated earthenware teaware remains from OKH that also cannot be precisely dated include banded vessels that can probably be dated after 1860 (see Brooks 2005: 36). These comprise the remains of three cups, each with a different banded pattern: one with thin red/green/red bands on the exterior and a thin green band on the interior; another with a blue band at the rim and a vegetal pattern below; one fire-damaged but with traces of banding; and one saucer with a different pattern again. These banded wares seem a fairly utilitarian type of teaware and each banded pattern is present in insufficient quantities to be considered a set, although they could have been used together.

Teapots The remains of at least four brown-glaze earthenware teapots recorded from OKH cannot be dated (Table 6.27). All these teapots have plain or mottled Rockingham-type glazes, appear fairly utilitarian, and are comparable in size to the teapots that can be dated after 1890 (see Table 6.9). While some are of a similar fabric and decoration – i.e. red-bodied, with a mottled brown glaze – as those in Table 6.9 marked ‘ENGLAND’, plain brown-glazed teapots were made in Australia as well as England. Teapots advertised in mail order catalogues as having ‘Brown Rockingham’ glaze and being of ‘Globe’ and other shapes (e.g. Anthony Hordern and Sons 1907: 344, 1913: 1247) seem comparable to these from OKH. However, they are not illustrated and do not have any evidence of their origin. One Australian business making ‘Globe’-shaped teapots – spherically shaped, brown-glazed, earthenware vessels – was Bendigo Pottery, Victoria, and these teapots were popular from the 1910s to the 1940s (O’Hoy 1989: 40). The teapots in the mail order catalogues are recorded in several sizes, holding from 1½ to 10 cups. Other catalogues for teapots made in Australia in the late nineteenth century also listed sizes. For example, the 1889 Lithgow Pottery catalogue lists teapots made in six sizes, ‘36’s 30’s 24’s 18’s 12’s 9’s’, with ‘9’ being

Decorated bone china and porcelain Although most of the other bone china and porcelain teawares from OKH probably date after 1890, based on the decoration or lack thereof (i.e. all makers’ marks for ‘white and gold’ and plain white bone china and porcelain date after 1890), remains of some 10 decorated bone china and porcelain teaware vessels cannot be dated either before or after 1890 (Table 6.26). Only one fragment of decorated bone china was recorded (cat. no. DD/513/0004 – Figure 146), from a hand-painted cup. Hand painting is a form of decoration used in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (see e.g. Majewski and O’Brien 1987: 159; and illustrated cups in Berthoud 1990: 219 [1870s], 249 [1930s]). Remains of another nine porcelain cups and saucers have simple banded decoration Table 6.26. Undated decorated bone china and porcelain teawares. Cat. nos.

Vessel

DD/513/0004 cup

Pattern or fabric type

Rim diam. Profiles and handles (inches)

No. MNV sherds

bone china, hand-painted floral

3⅛

everted rim

1

1

2

1

DD/817/0002 cup

porcelain, thick blue band

2¾

rolled rim; vertically straight-sided; ring handle with open bracket

DD/574/0009 saucer

porcelain, thin blue band

3⅛

rolled rim; rounded body

1

1

DD/537/0003 saucer

porcelain, thick blue band

5⅛

not identified

2

1

DD/809/0001 cup

porcelain, gilded, green band

2⅓

rolled rim; flaring, straight-sided; ring handle 1

1

DD/809/0006 saucer

porcelain, gilded, green band

5⅛

rolled rim; rounded body

1

1

DD/533/0005 cup

porcelain, dark red band

3⅛

not identified

1

1

DD/805/0007 saucer

porcelain, dark red band

6¼

rolled rim; rounded body

2

1

DD/811/0008 cup?

porcelain, red band, moulded

not known rolled rim

1

1

DD/532/0005 saucer

porcelain, black band

5½

1

1

13

10

rolled rim; fine-walled, rounded body

Totals

89

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 6.27. Undated earthenware teapots. Cat. nos.

Pattern or fabric type

Diam. (inches)

Diam.

No. sherds

MNV

DD/511.12/0055

orange body, brown glaze

rim 3⅛

rim 80 mm

1

1

DD/563/0013

orange body, brown glaze, lid

rim 2⅞

rim 72 mm

1

0

DD/510.12/0083

buff body, brown glaze

not known

not known

3

1

DD/546/0006

red body, mottled brown glaze

body 5¾

body 145 mm

1

1

DD/822/0002

red body, mottled brown glaze

body 5¾

body 145 mm

1

0

DD/801/0006

orange body, brown glaze

body 5⅛

body 130 mm

Totals

the largest (Ford 1995: 82). One of these teapots from OKH (cat. no. DD/511.12/0055 – Figure 149) has an impressed ‘24’. This number suggests that this teapot was a mediumsized pot that possibly held 5 to 6 cups (see discussion in chapter four, pp. 41–42). From this information in these catalogues and the dates for teapots in Table 6.9, it seems likely that these teapots were more probably post-1890 in date.

1

1

8

4

china and porcelain teawares that may have been parts of pre-1890 tea sets, but each of these patterns was not found in adequate quantities to be defined as a set. There is a seeming lack of ceramic teapots that can probably be dated pre-1890, compared with the evidence for teapots of definite and likely post-1890 date. This could indicate that during the first 20 years or so of the homestead, at least, teapots were made of either enamel or tin, or even silver, the type of afternoon tea apparatus described by Knight (2011: 32), but which was unlikely to be preserved in the archaeological record.

Summary Lack of evidence for the full paraphernalia required for a genteel afternoon tea (see Knight 2011: 32) may be in part due to the difficulty of acquiring such goods, but also the low likelihood of their being preserved in the archaeological record (e.g. silverware, tablecloths, tea trays, wooden tables etc.)

As noted in chapter four (Table 4.1), and above, a substantial majority of ceramic teawares at OKH probably date after 1890 – 67 per cent of definitely datable vessels and c.89 per cent of all identifiable teawares. Among the greater numbers of teawares definitely datable after 1890, though, only four to six specific tea sets can be identified, all small: a Willow transfer-printed set that may have been part of a breakfast set, and possibly part of the pre-1890 tableware set; a Wattle pattern transfer-printed set; a yellow-bodied earthenware set that may also have formed part of a complementary set with a pink-bodied set and a creambodied set; and a fluted, plain white Tuscan bone china set. Two other decal-decorated porcelain sets probably date to the post-1890 period. Thus, as with the tablewares, there are relatively few distinctive sets datable to this longer 65year period, compared with those datable to the first 15 to 20 years of the occupancy of the homestead.

The teaware sets from OKH that can probably be dated pre-1890 comprise some 10 matching transfer-printed sets in five main colours – blue, black, purple, brown and red – and a bone china sprigged set. Some may have predated the homestead by up to 50 years, and so would also predate the earlier Kinchega homestead. Knight has noted (2011: 37) ‘the significance of owning [an antiquated tea set] and keeping it in the family through the generations’. As argued by Gray (2013: 29), teawares were also ‘among the few possessions which could belong outright to a woman, and therefore be willed to her children, in particular daughters’. These sets are all relatively small and really only fit the definition of ‘tête à tête’ sets. While it is conceivable that such sets may have been carefully curated so that few were broken or discarded, it would seem likely that, if larger such sets had existed, more vessels would have eventually ended up at the refuse area over the next 70 years of the homestead’s occupancy. And while these ‘tête à tête’ sets could have been combined into large, and colourful, complementary sets, they were probably mainly used for small gatherings. The majority of these cups are of a size that could have been used for either tea or coffee, and some possibly as breakfast cups, although very few (see Table 4.2). None are so small as to be coffeeonly cups, although some of the more decorative sets have notably smaller cups than the others, perhaps suggesting a more genteel type of tea-drinking. There are also remains of a number of decorated, and often very delicate, bone

The vast majority of the identifiable teawares that most probably date after 1890 (over 80 per cent) are ‘white and gold’ or plain, in either earthenware, bone china or porcelain. It is difficult to assess whether these were six separate sets, comprising one very large ‘white and gold’ set and one plain in each fabric, or could be considered one amorphous set, or perhaps two. However, it seems more probable that they formed one complementary set, at least to some extent. As discussed above, it also seems probable that the earliest such teawares purchased at OKH were bone china, and partially replaced with Czech, then Japanese, porcelain. Whether or not these teawares comprised up to six separate sets, or one amorphous set, it is evident that the concept of a tea set, as typically defined (see chapter four, p. 38), does not apply to these post-1890, and largely twentieth-century, teawares from OKH, as was 90

Teaware Sets at the Old Kinchega Homestead also apparent for the tablewares. We start to see a change after c.1890, but this change becomes more pronounced as the twentieth century progresses. However, there is little

specific evidence for the purchase of any teawares through the 1930s to 1950s, with the exception of the yellow-bodied Laburnum Petal tea set, datable after 1936.

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7 Purchasing Tablewares and Teawares for the Kinchega Pastoral Estate: Price, Cost, Quality and Value P. Allison and V. Esposito The foregoing analyses of tableware and teaware remains from OKH identified various sets that provide insights into changing social practices and social interaction around dining and tea-drinking at this homestead. This chapter investigates the purchasing processes for these ceramics at OKH, in the context of the purchasing procedures and availability of such ceramics in Australia more generally. It provides greater understandings of the relative costs of the various sets and the various table settings at OKH, which, in turn, can provide information on the relative social standards and social values of the various occupants throughout the life of the homestead. The chapter commences with a brief outline of the ceramics market in Australia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the ways in which such goods might be distributed throughout Australia. Then, the likely cost, quality and value of the general types of tablewares and teawares found at OKH are discussed, using evidence from mail order catalogues, which provide a particular focus on post-1890 tablewares and teawares. Next, the chapter examines the specific evidence from the Kinchega Pastoral Estate bookkeeping records for the purchasing of tablewares and teawares by the estate, and makes comparisons between these estate records, the trade catalogue prices, and the actual ceramic remains at OKH, towards deepening our understanding of social practices, and of the socio-economic conditions in which they were played out, at this outback homestead. Finally, the chapter assesses what further information might be gleaned from the likely prices, and the quality, decoration and shapes of the various tablewares and teawares recorded at OKH on the social standards, values and aspirations of the occupants of this homestead.

market between 1868 and 1872. Brooks did note (2005: 60), though, that ‘different quality goods were shipped to different colonies with Victoria at the top of the scale and Tasmania at the bottom’. There has been little further investigation of how these shipments were distributed after they reached Australian shores or the processes by which consumers were able to access and purchase their household ceramics. Thus, the availability and distribution of teawares and tablewares throughout Australia during the nineteenth century and into the earlier twentieth century is not well understood, especially for more remote areas. Megan Atkins (1991) has investigated the marketing of ceramics in Sydney between c.1800 and 1870, however. She argued that there were two main methods of purchasing household ceramic items in Sydney during this period – what she referred to as a ‘normal retail situation’, and auctions which catered for both wholesale and retail purchases (Atkins 1991: 11–12, 83). For the latter method, Atkins noted (1991: 11–13) that there were different circumstances that resulted in three different types of auctions in Sydney: irregular auctions when people left the colonies, became insolvent or were deceased, and which involved the sale of second-hand goods, if often of high quality; regular weekly auctions, where auctioneers sold both new and second-hand goods on commission; and auctions for the sale of large consignments of new goods, often from newly arrived ships’ cargoes. Atkins noted that, by the mid-nineteenth century, this third type of auction became predominant and was primarily wholesale, with Sydney perhaps becoming ‘an important distribution centre for other colonies’ (1991: 13, 84). She also observed that by this date some retailers had become specialised in ceramic goods. Both these changes no doubt bear witness to a greater demand for and supply of goods of this nature, which were being distributed within the Australian colonies after the 1850s.

Availability and distribution of ceramics in Australia In historical archaeology in Australia, the focus has been on nationwide trade networks and importation of eighteenthand nineteenth-century ceramics (for discussion: Brooks 2005: 56–62; see also Staniforth 2009: 97–98). For example, Brooks has highlighted (2005: 59–61) the small percentages of British ceramics that reached Australia compared with other parts of the colonial world, but noted a slight increase in the 1860s due to the American Civil War, when, Brooks argues, ceramics destined for the North American market were ‘dumped in Australia’. As discussed in chapter four (p. 43), though, there is little evidence that any ceramics ‘dumped’ in Sydney included the ‘common seconds’ reportedly destined for the North American

Neither these auctions nor these early retail outlets were likely to have been directly accessible to any outback consumers, who, being mainly British and European colonists, were limited in number before the midnineteenth century, and essentially non-existent in the west Darling district. The early squatters, and their men, who moved into this district at the end of the 1840s no doubt had to purchase their goods before leaving any main cities or ports, and may even have purchased most of their durables before leaving Britain, or their homeland (for examples of New Zealand colonists’ lists of purchases 93

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Cost, quality and potential value in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century trade catalogues

before leaving Britain: Pickmere 1990: 25–27; Deans 2018: 32–33).21 Given the types of colonists in this area prior to the 1850s, as outlined in chapter three (p. 25), there were essentially no consumers in the west Darling region likely to be interested in such goods. By the time the OKH was occupied, in the mid-1870s, river steamers were plying the Darling River to take away the wool clip and bring in supplies, but only when river levels permitted, so access to such goods was not a regular event and was unreliable. As also noted in chapter three (pp. 25–26), this river transport meant that, in the early years of OKH’s occupation, cargoes were coming and going from Adelaide, rather than Sydney, although some goods may have been brought to this region and to this homestead by hawkers via rough stock routes.

As outlined in chapter four (pp. 42–43), Crook (2008) used late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century mail order catalogues from Australia, the United States and Canada to investigate relative prices for different types of ceramics and glassware and to assess the likely ‘cost, quality and value’ of such finds recorded archaeologically. Her analyses focused on tablewares, because she observed that teawares were in the minority among the ceramic and glassware vessels in these catalogues (Crook 2008: 117, fig. 5.14). In terms of cost, Crook observed that the main price differences related to fabric and origin (2008: 141). She also noted that decoration – different types of transfer-printed patterns and particularly gilding – was the main factor that affected the price of tableware vessels in Australia. However, Crook (2008: 137) also found frequent references to vessel shape in these mail order catalogues and concluded that ‘shape played a significant role in pattern selection’, and therefore price.

As the nineteenth century progressed, department stores became a main form of retail outlet in Australia (Crook 2000: 18–20). While these department stores were mainly in urban centres and catered for the middle classes, as indicated in chapter four, they produced mail order trade catalogues. Such trade catalogues widened opportunities for consumers in more remote areas to choose their purchases by post. The earliest known mail order catalogue in Australia is that of Anthony Hordern, who established a drapery shop in Sydney in 1825 (Crook 2008: 80–84), and was producing mail order catalogues from at least June 1828.22 Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd grew to become one of the largest department stores in Australia, with the largest mail order business. From the 1870s, mail order catalogues became more widespread among other department stores, and an essential mode of sale and purchase in Australia. This marketing approach by the big urban department stores provided outback consumers with the same ranges of goods as their urban counterparts. While they provide a valuable documentary resource for this particular part of this study, few catalogues produced prior to the 1890s have survived (Crook 2008: 67). According to Crook (2008: 66–67), the earliest known surviving Australian department store catalogue is that of Melbourne Mutual store, which dates to 1892, and the oldest surviving Anthony Hordern catalogue in public collections dates to 1894. The oldest mail order catalogue in the Australian National Library collection is Lassetters’ 1897 catalogue, but it has not been very useful for this study. More useful here, and from department stores from which we know the Kinchega Pastoral Estate purchased household goods, are the catalogues of Antony Hordern and Sons Ltd in Sydney, dating 1904–47 (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1904, 1907, passim), and the 1920s general catalogue of Harris, Scarfe, Ltd in Adelaide (1920–29).

All the OKH tablewares were refined white earthenware, except one blue dyed-body set (Table 5.26), and all, for which the origin is identifiable, were made in England, except one post-1921 Japanese set (see Table 5.14). The limitation of tableware fabrics to these earthenwares could potentially be significant in respect of the overall value of the OKH tableware sets and global standards and availability. However, this limitation reflects, to some extent, the apparent limited availability of high-quality porcelain in Australian stores generally in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Also, as discussed in chapter four, variation in the quality of the earthenwares during the lifetime of OKH is related more to chronology and technological developments than to price and likely value. Therefore, comparing fabrics and origins among the OKH tableware remains to assess likely related costs as evidence for social value and social status in Australian terms is essentially irrelevant here. Comparing the shapes among the OKH tablewares to assess their relative value is also not always relevant, as the main observations concerning differences in the shapes and sizes seem related to chronology rather than cost (see Table 5.28), although, again, there are some exceptions, discussed below. Therefore, the main factor for assessing cost and value among the OKH tablewares is decoration. However, this is not the case for the types of teawares found at OKH. As is evident in the discussion below, all four – fabric, origin, decoration and shape – were likely to affect the price, and therefore value, of these teaware vessels and sets. The Australian trade catalogues, dating from 1904 to 1947, indicate that fabric and origin of teawares were often more diverse than for tablewares, and that ‘china’ (i.e. bone china and porcelain) teawares were more expensive than their earthenware counterparts, irrespective of decoration. For example, in 1923, bone china ‘Dark Blue Willow’ teasize cups and saucers were 38/- (38 shillings) per dozen,

21 Interestingly, these lists include some silverware, glassware and kitchen items, but not actually ceramics. Given these similar types of purchased items, it is conceivable that ceramic items were not purchased specifically, but may already have been owned by the travellers, for example as wedding gifts. 22 Crook argued (2008: 66) that the first Anthony Hordern catalogue was claimed to be produced before 1868. A June 1828 mail order catalogue cover can be viewed online –https://www.pinterest.co.uk/ pin/5840674490461526 (accessed 17 Nov. 2018).

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Purchasing Tablewares and Teawares for the Kinchega Pastoral Estate while earthenware cups and saucers in the same size and pattern were 21/- per dozen (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1923: 372–73). Price differences can also be found among ‘china’ teawares, according to origin. In these catalogues, the term ‘English china’ (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1914: 1352), sometimes also referred to as ‘best English’ (e.g. Anthony Hordern and Sons 1930: 74), usually applies to bone china (Crook 2008: 116), while ‘Continental china’ (e.g. Anthony Hordern and Sons 1914: 1352), ‘Bohemian china’ and ‘Japanese china’ (e.g. in Anthony Hordern and Sons 1904) are used for porcelain teawares from these respective origins. In the Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd sale catalogue (1904, ‘Cheap crockery’ sale) a Bohemian 40-piece service with ‘bright floral patterns’ was priced at 21/-, and a Bohemian 40-piece floral design at 25/-, while a 40-piece English china ‘red Marguerite’ was priced at only 16/6 (16 shillings and 6 pence). Equally, in the same catalogue, ‘Japanese China, square shape’ cups and saucers, at a sale price of 5/6 per dozen, were slightly more expensive than ‘Best English, fluted Princess shape’ cups and saucers, with a sale price of 5/- per dozen. However, as noted in chapter four, much low-priced western-style Japanese porcelain was exported in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Also, by 1914, while Japanese ‘china tea services’ were priced between 5/- and 35/-, both English and Continental ‘china’ were advertised together as 10/- to £10, and so seemingly similarly priced (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1914: 1352). Thereafter, though, there is little reference to anything other than ‘English china’ in these catalogues, except in 1930, when the Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd sale catalogue advertised a rose-decorated ‘Thin Foreign China 21 piece Tea Set’ for 16/-, while the price for the same-sized set of English china varied from 15/6 to 39/-, for an ‘English China Tea Set’ decorated with Willow pattern (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1930: 74, 75). The pre-sale prices for these sets were 18/6, 21/- and 50/-, respectively, showing that although the ‘foreign’ china was originally the cheapest, this was not so in the sales. These relative prices, and the continued advertising of ‘English china’ throughout these catalogues, indicate that porcelain teawares, both Japanese and European, were no longer likely to have been of higher quality and value than bone china after about the first decade of the twentieth century. It is evidence that some of the cheapest teawares in the trade catalogues are plain, English earthenware, and also that some of these teawares decreased in price through the early decades of the twentieth century.

dozen. However, the mail order catalogues show that, over time, gilded plain, ‘white and gold’23 teawares decreased more in price in comparison to other patterned and also plain teawares. For example, in the Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd sale catalogues’ china cups and saucers sections for 1912 and 1924, Silver-shaped white and gold were 24/6 per dozen in 1912 and 18/6 in 1924: a decrease of 24 per cent. However, Worcester-shaped transfer-print (possibly gilded) were 27/- per dozen in 1912 and 24/- in 1924: a decrease of only 11 per cent (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1912: 372, 374; 1924: 372, 374). Similarly, for earthenware cups and saucers, these catalogues show that Worcestershaped ‘band and gilt’ was priced at 24/- per dozen in 1912 and 21/- in 1924: a decrease of 12.5 per cent, while plain Perth-shaped were priced at 10/6 per dozen in 1912 and 9/6 in 1924: a decrease of only 9.5 per cent, and Worcestershaped plain earthenware cups and saucers remained the same over this period, at 15/- per dozen (see Anthony Hordern and Sons 1912: 373; 1924: 373). ‘White Ironstone’ with a wheat-ear pattern is also found in these catalogues. The cup-and-saucer price, at 14/- per dozen in 1912 and 1924, was similar to that plain for earthenware, which ranged from 10/6 to 15/- in 1912 and from 9/6 to 15/- in 1924 (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1912: 373; 1924: 373). The shapes as well as the sizes of teaware vessels, particularly of cups, also influenced their price. In general, larger breakfast-sized cups were more expensive than smaller tea-sized cups. For example, ‘Paris Shape’ tea-sized cups and saucers decorated with ‘White, Gold line, Gold edge and Gold sprig’ were 5/- per dozen, while in breakfast size they were 6/- per dozen (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1913: 1244). And a plain-shaped tea-sized cup was cheaper than a fluted one. For example, in comparison with the ‘white and gold’ ‘Paris Shape’ tea-sized cups and saucers at 5/- per dozen, which had plain, slightly flaring straight sides and a ring handle, ‘Richelieu Fluted Shape’ tea-sized cups and saucers, with a ‘Gold edge’, were 6/3 per dozen (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1913: 1244). Interestingly, the undoubtedly smaller coffee cups and saucers do not seem necessarily to have been cheaper than tea-sized cups and saucers. In the Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd sale catalogue (1904, ‘Cheap crockery’ sale), the price for 40 teacups and saucers that were ‘Fluted White with Pink inside’ was 14/-, while the sale price for coffee cups and saucers of ‘Foley china, white and pink inside’ was 10/per dozen. Unfortunately, there are few illustrations or descriptions of coffee-cup shapes to use their shape as a measure of value.

Among these advertised teawares, as Crook observed for the tablewares, decoration again had an important influence on price. Plain wares were evidently cheaper than decorated wares. For example, in the Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd 1923 catalogue (1923: 373), Minton-shaped tea-size cups and saucers were 15/- per dozen for ‘Plain White’ and 21/- per dozen for ‘Dark Blue Willow’. Crook argued that gilding increased the price of wares. For example, ‘Plain White’ and ‘White Granite’ earthenware teawares are both priced at 4/3 per dozen in the Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd catalogue (1913: 1242), while ‘White and Gold … Gold edge and line or three gold lines’ were priced at 5/6 per

Thus, these mail order catalogues, together with Crook’s previous analyses of tableware prices and values, outlined in chapter four, give us insights into the relative costs of the tablewares and teawares available to Australian consumers, These types of teawares, also known as ‘gold edged’, ‘white and gold band’, ‘white and gold edge and line’, ‘gold edge line’, ‘gold band and line’, ‘white and gold narrow and broad line’, ‘plain gold band’ and ‘gold edge and line’ in the trade catalogues, were commonly advertised from the 1840s (Atkins 1991: 59).

23

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Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? particularly in the late nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century. They also serve to provide insights into the relative values that these consumers were likely to have placed on the different types of tablewares and teawares according to price, and how these prices may have informed their purchasing practices and the resulting social values and significance of the different types.

estate of £58 19s 8d included freight charges of £5 3s 7d, for rail to Broken Hill (Kinchega Station Records n.d., Apr. 1891–Oct. 1915). So, the costs discussed below for such purchases do not include these additional transport costs that would have made the actual costs to the estate a little higher than the price listed in the mail order catalogues. The costs listed in the estate records are therefore likely to be the same as the prices listed in the catalogues. For goods purchased locally, from Broken Hill or Menindee, freight costs were no doubt included in the cost of each item to the estate.

The Kinchega Pastoral Estate bookkeeping records For the tablewares and teawares recorded at OKH, more specific information on the purchasing patterns – particularly how, when and by whom these commodities were purchased – can be found in the bookkeeping records of Kinchega Pastoral Estate, held at Kars Station (Kinchega Station Records n.d.). These records provide information on the shopping practices on the Kinchega Estate, and give us insights into the relative costs of these ceramics to these outback consumers and into their potential quality and value. These records also demonstrate the role of the Pastoral Estate in the maintenance, and perhaps even orchestration, of the dining and tea-drinking practices and standards of its employees.

Unfortunately, in the Kars Station archive there are no invoice books or other bookkeeping records prior to April 1891, and the last entry is dated September 1949. Two of the invoice books overlap in date, one covering the period from April 1891 to July 1913 and one from April 1891 to October 1915. It is possible that these were for two different stations, for example Kars and Kinchega, although this is not indicated. In general, the destination within the estate for particular entries is not provided, although there are some exceptions. Also, there are no invoice books in this archive for the periods between October 1915 and October 1919. In addition, the recording is not always consistent across these invoice books, and it was often difficult to read the handwriting, and so to transcribe the entries accurately. Nevertheless, these bookkeeping records do give some useful insights into how and when tablewares and teawares were purchased and distributed among the employees on the Kinchega Pastoral Estate, and into the relative costs of these commodities, for some of the period in which OKH was occupied.

Preliminary research into these bookkeeping records in 2000 revealed that they held a wealth of information on supplying the estate and its three homesteads, Kinchega, Kars and Mulculca, notably the increasing frequency with which supplies were ordered by the estate (Allison 2003: 189). More targeted research into these records in 2010 investigated their usefulness for interrogating the material remains recorded at OKH for greater understandings of social behaviour associated with the consumption practices of its inhabitants, and particularly with eating and drinking (Allison 2014: 92; Allison n.d. 1). During this research, we therefore collated information in the invoice books on the supply of tablewares and teawares to the estate – i.e. on the origins of these goods, the purchasing dates for various types of vessels, the quantities purchased on each occasion, and the relative costs. We also collated information on the purchasing of tea, for the Kinchega Estate generally and, on occasion, for OKH more specifically.

Purchasing of tablewares by the Kinchega Estate (Appendix 5) There are some 130 entries in the Kinchega Estate invoice books likely to be tablewares. These vessels, purchased from at least 1890, were usually part of bulk orders of household supplies to the estate, and were often recorded by type (e.g. ‘dinner plates’). However, specific tableware items were sometimes purchased as separate orders, but in rather small quantities. On two occasions (February 1921 and December 1935) ‘dinner sets’ were purchased. There are also numerous entries for cutlery and some for jugs, not discussed here. There are no entries for tablewares in the last invoice book, from April 1944 to September 1949. The type of ware (i.e. tin, enamel, ceramic or type of ceramic) is usually not indicated, but can sometimes be deduced from the relative cost and from the quantity supplied. For example, ceramic plates were usually bought by the half dozen or dozen, while tin and enamel plates were purchased in lots of up to three, or possibly four dozen. Thus, an entry for two dozen 10-inch tin dinner plates supplied in May 1892, at a total cost of 3/6, suggests that half a dozen dessert plates supplied in August 1891, at a total cost of 2/6, and half a dozen 6-inch plates (probably side plates, see Table 4.2) supplied in June 1892, at a total cost of 2/9, were likely to have been ceramic. There is little evidence in these invoice books for the purchasing

Each of the homesteads on the Kinchega Estate has a store, from which goods, such as food and tobacco, would be dispersed, usually as purchases by individual employees. It seems likely that this same system was used for the tablewares and teawares purchased by the estate. The estate bookkeeping records indicate that, while many of the tableware and teawares purchases recorded were made from retailers in Broken Hill, and even in Menindee, there are infrequent purchases from suppliers further afield, such as ‘G. B. Harris Scarfe & Co.’, in Adelaide, and Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd, in Sydney. Such purchases were very probably made by the estate owners or estate storekeepers through the mail order catalogues discussed above. Freight costs are often listed separately in the invoice books for goods coming from Adelaide or Sydney. For example, for a consignment of household goods purchased from ‘Harris Scarfe & Co.’ in Adelaide on 5 July 1892, the cost to the 96

Purchasing Tablewares and Teawares for the Kinchega Pastoral Estate of tablewares according to their origin. The exception is in December 1941, when a distinction was made between embossed Japanese plates and embossed English plates. While no quantities are provided here, and although the Japanese plates are smaller, at 5/- in total, they would seem to have been cheaper than the English ones, totalling 7/6. These relative costs contrast with those of Japanese and English teawares listed in the 1904 mail order catalogues, conceivably indicating the increasing trade in cheaper Japanese ceramics from the early to the mid-twentieth century.

concurs with the apparent predominance of smaller bowls, as opposed to soup plates, at OKH that can be dated after 1890 (see Table 5.28). This entry perhaps indicates a fairly late date for these bowl remains. Only four possible glass vessels were supplied by the estate, between 1910 and 1942, and none were definitely tableware. Likewise, glass tableware remains were limited at OKH and may have been bought by the homestead occupants themselves. While some 1,220 tableware vessels were purchased by the Kinchega Estate between April 1891 and September 1943, and demonstrate a comprehensive range of vessel types, there is little evidence that these were being purchased as actual tableware sets. Given that the bookkeeping records cover the period after 1890, this lack of identifiable, moreor-less matching, sets resonates with the relative lack of clearly identified and distinctive tableware sets for this period at OKH, compared with the pre-1890 period. The first reference in the invoice books to a ‘dinner set (white)’ was in February 1921, and this set was bought from ‘G. P. Harris Scarfe & Co.’ in Adelaide for £6 2s 3d. Interestingly, a further ‘dinner set’ purchased somewhat later, in December 1935, from Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd in Sydney, was less expensive, at only £4 7s 6d, so presumably of lower quality and value, or perhaps a less extensive set.

Where the estate records indicate the destination for purchased goods within estate, they indicate, for example, that tinwares were usually destined for the ‘sheep station’, and ‘sauce boats’ and ‘D. R. plates’24 for the ‘house account’ (see entries for July and November 1899). Until 1915, when the manager moved from Kinchega to Kars, the ‘house account’ would have referred to OKH. After 1922, a few entries indicate for which station the tablewares are destined (i.e. Kars, Kinchega or Mulculca), although these designations no doubt indicate the station store, and would include goods destined for all workers on that station as well as the occupants of the respective station homesteads. For example, in August 1928, two dozen dinner plates and two dozen soup plates were purchased for the shearers at ‘Kinchega’, and would have been destined for the shearers’ quarters, c.3  km away from OKH, where they had their own cooking and eating facilities. It is perhaps noteworthy that by this date shearers were using soup plates.

From 1923, there are numerous entries for plates, some listed as ‘white’ and some as ‘embossed’, bought from ‘G. Wood, Son and Co. Ltd.’, a wholesale grocer in Adelaide and not to be confused with the Staffordshire Pottery of Wood and Sons, Burslem, England. The ‘embossed’ plates are likely to have been the types of relief-moulded tablewares recorded at OKH (see Tables 5.12–23). As discussed above, further ‘embossed china’ plates, of different sizes (8 and 10 inch) and identified as being from Japan and England, respectively, were purchased in December 1941, seemingly for a cost of around 5/- to 10/6 per dozen. These differing origins of manufacture are also commensurate with the relief-moulded vessels identified at OKH, although the sizes are not exact matches with the three main reliefmoulded sets (see Tables 5.12–14). This might indicate that while the listed size type was standard (see Table 4.2), the actual vessel size could vary slightly.

The range of vessels purchased, from at least the 1890s, includes several different-sized plates (6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 inches), soup plates, tureens, dessert plates, bread-andbutter plates, egg cups, jam dishes and covers, sauce boats and gravy boats, indicating that the estate provided for the homesteads many of the tableware types recorded at OKH. There are numerous entries for ‘oval meat dishes’ (12, 14, 16 and 18 inches), most notably prior to 1915. These dishes may have been for roasting meat in, rather than tablewares. However, the high proportion of these vessels in the earlier entries seems to concur with the higher proportions of platters recorded at OKH prior to 1890 and of identified meat dishes for the table (see chapter four, p. 39), compared with the numbers recorded in the later period (see Table 5.28). The decrease in the number of meat dishes being purchased implies changes in diet, with less dominance of meat in the later years. This change to a more varied diet might seem to contrast with the changes noted in chapter five from a greater range of table vessels to a simpler table setting. However, here fashion and social practice no doubt play a greater role in the choices of table settings than diet.

In June 1905, a dozen of each of two differently sized ‘blue-lined’ plates were supplied to the estate. In each of July 1907 and June 1909, another dozen ‘blued lined’ 10inch dinner plates were purchased. It is conceivable that these constituted some of the blue-banded ceramic plates found at OKH. However, these plates are invoiced too early to have been the gilded dark blue-banded Meakin or Empire wares found at OKH, which were produced after 1912 (see Table 5.9). These orders could, alternatively, have been for plates of the mid-blue band and-line pattern recorded at OKH (see Table 5.6). However, the profiles of the mid-blue band-and-line plates at OKH seem to date their manufacture to 1880–90. It is conceivable, but by no means certain, that the invoiced ‘blue-lined’ plates may have acted as replacements for this earlier set. They do seem to have been purchased in considerable quantities

There is a further concordance between the invoice book entries and what was discovered at OKH. ‘Coupes’ are not listed in the estate records prior to December 1935, which

24

‘D. R.’ plates were possibly dinner plates.

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Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? and relatively frequently. However, the cost of c.7/6 per dozen for the 10-inch ‘blue-lined’ plates supplied in June 1909 is the same as that of two dozen 10-inch enamel plates supplied in July 1905. Even if these were indeed ceramic plates, the comparative costs suggest relatively low-value tablewares, perhaps destined for the shearers and station workers, and, again, that they were unlikely to have been the gilded dark blue-banded Meakin and Empire wares found at OKH. This would also apply to one dozen ‘imperial’ soup plates supplied in July 1911 at a cost of 5/9 per dozen. While the descriptor ‘imperial’ could suggest these were gilded dark blue-banded Empire tablewares, these invoiced purchases again predate the manufacture of the Empire and Meakin plates recorded at OKH. Also, these soup plates were even less expensive than the seemingly utilitarian blue-lined plates, and also than the relatively inexpensive ‘Federal pattern’ dinner service in Lassetters’ catalogue (1913: 363), whose soup plates at 10/6 per dozen were nearly twice the price and which, as discussed in chapter five (p. 52), may have been the pattern of these Empire tablewares at OKH. On balance, there is little direct evidence that this particular gilded set would have been purchased by the estate. This also applies to the 12-sided set that was seemingly of ‘Imperial shape’, likely to date after 1913, and to have been purchased as a set (see chapter five, p. 58).

In general, these invoice books indicate that, at least during the period from 1891 until 1944, the estate purchased over 1,200 tableware vessels for its employees (see Allison and Cremin 2006: 53). Comparison of the costs in these estate bookkeeping records with contemporary prices in the mail order catalogues indicate that the estate purchased relatively good-quality but inexpensive tablewares. For example, in May 1923, 10-inch dinner plates were being purchased by the Kinchega Estate for 16/- and Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd (1923: 387) priced the same-sized plates, as parts of polygonal, moulded and fluted dinner sets, between 16/- and 16/6. The estate also purchased a relatively wide range of vessel sizes and types. For example, the entries in the bookkeeping records for May 1923 indicate that four different-sized plates were purchased for Mulculca. However, while the estate was purchasing a diverse range of tableware vessel types, conceivably for a range of different courses and table settings, it was not generally concerned with providing matching dinner sets, at least after 1891. The apparent bulk buying of tablewares suggests an emphasis on broadly standardised, but not necessarily perfectly matching, table settings. The invoice books would seem to indicate very limited purchasing of second-hand or indeed wholesale tablewares, at least by the estate, who seem to have preferred to purchase new items directly from retailers, no doubt through mail order catalogues. A potential exception is the entries for purchases from Silver City auctions in January 1942, but this exception – if these were indeed second-hand goods – might serve to reinforce an argument for the lack of purchasing of second-hand tablewares by the estate and perhaps lack of use of such vessels by OKH occupants.

Much of the tableware destined for the shearers and other men working on the estate, certainly during the earlier years recorded in the invoice books, was very probably tin or enamel, and possibly wooden (i.e. ‘acasia’ or ‘accacia’ may have meant acacia), but there is increasing evidence that the shearers, at least, were provided with ceramic vessels in the later years. This may have been the destination for the invoiced ‘blue-lined’ and ‘Imperial’ plates discussed above. In July 1941, there is firmer evidence that the shearers were being supplied ceramic plates, but also that these plates were likely to have been of a similar quality to those used by their overseers living at OKH. At this date, two dozen 10-inch ‘embossed china’ dinner plates and a dozen embossed china coupe plates were supplied to the shearers.

Thus, many of the observations made from the entries in the estate’s invoice books concur with the analyses of the types, quality of the fabric and decoration, and range of forms of post-1890 tableware vessels recovered from the OKH, and vice versa. Together, they provide insights into both the prices and the values of the OKH tablewares. Analyses of the bookkeeping records also provide insights into the role of the estate in the purchasing of tablewares for its employees and the relative social status of the occupants of the different homesteads on the estate. For example, the range of plate sizes purchased in May 1923 for Mulculca is reflected in the range of sizes found at OKH (see Table 5.28), although with evidence for slightly larger 10¼-inch dinner plates at the latter. This implies that the three main homesteads were likely to be receiving a similar range of tableware vessel types, for similar daily dining settings, with the estate providing these settings for overseers’ and managers’ families, as it was for the shearers and station workers. The remains from OKH that can be dated prior to 1890 provide evidence for relatively formal, although not necessarily the highest quality, dining settings, with moreor-less matched sets of transfer-printed tablewares. The estate records and the finds from OKH indicate that, as the twentieth century progressed, the tablewares and related table settings were simpler, and also that those of the homestead occupants were not so dissimilar from some of those of shearers and other station workers. It would seem

Most tablewares in these invoice books were purchased through major retailers and department stores in Broken Hill, Adelaide, or Sydney. Tin plates and pannikins supplied from Adelaide by ‘G. B. Harris Scarfe & Co.’ in May 1894 indicate that even the most utilitarian household items were still being ordered directly from Adelaide at this date, despite improved local services. Thereafter, most of the limited tablewares purchased from G. B. Harris Scarfe and Co. and from Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd were higher priced, and were probably more valued, if not necessarily higher quality. The types of tablewares such as the two itemised dinner sets mentioned above may not have been available from suppliers in Broken Hill. Interestingly, in January 1942, a number of plates were purchased from the ‘Silver City auctions’ (i.e. in Broken Hill). This is the only occasion when items were purchased at auction. As discussed above, though, this does not necessarily mean that they were second hand. 98

Purchasing Tablewares and Teawares for the Kinchega Pastoral Estate that the more amorphous twentieth-century tablewares with relief-moulded patterns found at OKH were used by all these different groups, in much less formal settings.

to these homestead occupants and used for less everyday table settings than the relief-moulded sets. Unlike the Cuba pattern and 12-sided sets, though, replacement vessels for gilded dark blue-banded were evidently being purchased over possibly two to three decades when the OKH occupants changed from managers’ to overseers’ families. While it cannot be substantiated from the information in the invoice books, it is conceivable that, whether or not these tablewares were bought by the estate, this gilded dark blue-banded set, probably purchased in the second and third decades of the twentieth century, may have been a more ‘institutionalised’ set than the Cuba pattern or 12-sided set, and was perhaps used for occasions involving larger groups of diners, than those that took place in the earlier years of the twentieth century.

However, some of the post-1890 tableware types recorded at OKH have a less clear relationship with the tablewares recorded in the estate invoice books, particularly with the three main identified sets. That is, the Cuba pattern set (Table 5.8 and Figures 33 and 34), the 12-sided set, and the gilded blue-banded Empire and Meakin wares were all manufactured during the period covered by the invoice books, but cannot be clearly identified among any of the entries in these records, through cost or description. While it is conceivable that the 12-sided set (Table 5.24 and Figures 66 and 67) was the ‘white dinner set’ recorded in the invoice books and bought from G. P. Harris Scarfe and Co. in Adelaide in 1921, at a cost of £6 2s 3d, the dinner set recorded at OKH was probably the same as that called ‘Imperial Shape’ and advertised by Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd, for which a 26-piece dinner set was priced at 15/in 1914, 52/- in 1923 and 47/- in 1924 (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1914: 1369; 1923: 367; 1924: 367), as discussed in chapter five (p. 58). Thus, this 12-sided set would have been considerably cheaper than the one bought from G. P. Harris Scarfe and Co. As also mentioned in chapter five (p. 60), the ‘Grecian White’ set in the Harris, Scarfe, Ltd 1920s catalogue (1920–29: CG4) seems identical to the ‘Imperial Shape’ dinner set advertised by Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd. However, no price is included in this catalogue for this set.25 It therefore seems probable that the set was not purchased by the estate.

Frustratingly, the remaining estate records give no information on pre-1891 purchasing of tablewares and provide no relevant information for the transfer-printed tablewares and tableware sets recorded at OKH. For an understanding of the purchasing procedures for the tablewares likely to have been used at OKH between 1876 and 1890, and their social significance, these ceramic remains are the main source of evidence. The first observation is that all the tablewares recorded at OKH, both pre- and post-1890, are refined white earthenware. As already noted, this would seem to be the norm throughout nineteenth-century Australia, with only rare evidence for bone china tableware in the archaeological record (see Hayes 2014a: 26, Table 5.3) or in the mail order catalogues (see Crook 2008: 116–17, fig. 5.15).

As noted above, there is also insufficient evidence that the gilded dark blue-banded tablewares (Tables 5.9–10 and Figures 35–50) would have been purchased by the estate. As also discussed above and in chapter five (p. 52), this set may have been the ‘Federal’ pattern dinner set for which, in 1913, a 26-piece set was priced at 36/9, and a 70-piece set at £5 9s (Lassetters’ 1913: 363; for discussion see also Allison and Cremin 2006: 53). This would mean that, while this set was listed with ‘dinner services of little money’ (Lassetters’ 1906: 291), a dozen vessels in this set would have cost at least 16/-, which is more than most of the other tablewares purchased by the estate during these same first two decades of the twentieth century. So, although vessels in this set were evidently being continuously replaced, they were unlikely to have been any of those recorded in the invoice books.

As discussed in chapters four (p. 43) and five (p. 49), four of the main sets of transfer-printed earthenware tablewares recorded at OKH (Willow, Albion, Asiatic Pheasant and Rhine) were the most common types of patterns for tablewares recovered from nineteenth-century archaeological urban and rural sites in Australia. As also noted in chapter five (p. 49), some of the older forms of vessels and some of the patterns among the Willow, Albion and Asiatic Pheasant sets predate the initial occupation of OKH in 1876, as well as the establishment of the Kinchega Pastoral Estate in 1870 and the earlier homestead in this area (see Allison 2003: 172), and even the earliest European settlement in this area in the 1850s (see chapter one, p. 1). As noted in chapter five (pp. 62–63), these sets, or at least parts of them, may have been purchased by the occupants, before they took up residence at Kinchega, and they may have brought these tablewares with them. What is also evident amongst these initial tableware sets at OKH is that the vessels were not always matching, with slight differences of patterns within each set, and also sometimes in vessel profiles. It is likely that at least some of them may have been purchased in small quantities, perhaps as replacements. Crook commented (2000: 23) that the purchasing of second-hand, mismatched sets was a likely practice in Australia among the less affluent (see also Prossor et al. 2012: 815). As argued above, though, there is a lack of evidence for second-hand purchases by the estate after 1890. There would also have been lack of opportunity

These three post-1890 dinner sets identified at OKH, but not clearly identified in the entries in the estate invoice books, are all of relatively higher quality in terms of decoration and shape, and seemingly higher priced, than the reliefmoulded pattern sets that do seem to be identifiable in the bookkeeping records. It is conceivable that these table settings constituted purchases made by individual OKH households and, therefore, were probably of higher value According to the entry for this set, prices can be found on page 6. However, page 6 of this catalogue is blank.

25

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Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? prior to 1890 for sales of any such vessels directly to OKH occupants in such remote and unpopulated areas. This lack of evidence for purchasing of second-hand goods and lack of opportunity for second-hand purchases once moving into this remote region supports the argument that these early tableware sets were most probably provided by the occupants, whether as heirlooms or purchased secondhand in the main cities, and possibly already mismatched before settling in this region.

(Appendix 7). All the cups and saucers are likely to have been ceramic except for the two identified as glass (purchased in 1934). Only 19 of the cups and saucers are identified specifically as teawares, and only six as coffee cups, with 50 identified as breakfast wares. It seems probable that most of the unspecified cups and saucers were of standard teaware sizes, and only exceptional breakfast and coffee sizes are specifically identified in these entries. Interestingly, though, as many as two dozen breakfast cups and saucers were purchased in April 1922.

The dates for the Rhine, Cable and blue band-and-line decorated tableware vessels indicate that these three pre1890 sets could have been purchased as new stock, during the period of occupancy of OKH, although they were not necessarily produced as complete, matching sets or while the owners were in residence there. The Rhine tableware, in particular, is unlikely to have been produced as a single set, as there are notable variations in the patterns and colours among the vessels. However, the popularity of Rhine pattern may have required export orders to be complemented by products from other potteries, thereby creating slight differences within an intended matching dinner set. The differences within these sets at OKH are so inconspicuous that it is doubtful that users would have noticed them. To all intents and purposes, these would have appeared as matching sets and been valued as such, whether or not they were purchased as such.

Most of these cups and saucers were purchased from main retail suppliers in Broken Hill, although there are again infrequent, and relatively more expensive, purchases from G. P. Harris Scarfe and Co., the Australian China and Glass Co., and Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd. Six cups and saucers were also bought from Faust and Co. in Menindee in September 1922, the first evidence of such a local purchase. At 22/- per dozen, even considering that the freight costs could be included, these teawares were unlikely to have been the cheaper and plainer types of teawares listed in the mail order catalogues at this date, but were also not among the more expensive. For example, the teacups and saucers, as opposed to breakfast cups, listed in Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd’s 1923 catalogue range from at least 84/- per dozen for Doulton down to 9/- per dozen for plain white Worcester (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1923: 370–73). A dozen cups and saucers purchased by the estate in February 1942 for £1 2s 6d were similar in cost to those purchased some 20 years earlier from Faust and Co. In 1942, Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd was selling ‘English white and gold fine china’ for 18/- per dozen (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1942: 25). If, as is possible, the teawares in the invoice books purchased in February 1942 were from the Silver City auctions and were second hand, they were fairly expensive if new gilded teawares could be bought at this time for less. If they were indeed bought at auction, this suggests that such auction-room purchases did not comprise cheap second-hand goods, but involved the procurement of either new teawares, or at least good-quality, and relatively highly valued, second-hand teawares. The destination ‘SS’ here for these particular goods is unclear, but could indicate a station store, and probably one of the overseer’s homesteads, rather than the manager’s homestead that was then on Kars Station. Vessels bought from local sources may have cost more because of the freight costs. However, if the estate purchases in 1923 were indeed of the cheapest teawares available, this would have meant a mark-up from 9/- to 22/-, which is over 140 per cent, and would seem excessive. If the 1942 purchase had been ‘white and gold’ teawares, this would have been a mark-up of 25 per cent, which is more reasonable, but suggests the purchase of higher-quality teawares, as discussed below.

In summary, while many of the pre-1890 tableware sets may have been the personal purchases of the OKH occupants, from at least 1891, tablewares were bought for and supplied to the estate homesteads by the estate, and replacement vessels were also purchased by the estate, on behalf of its employees. It would appear that at least during the post-1890 period managers and overseers were not expected to provide all their own tablewares. Unfortunately, we lack evidence that these purchasing practices, evidenced after 1891 by these invoice books, applied to the previous 20 years, when such goods had to come to Kinchega by bullock cart or river steamer – i.e. how replacement vessels were purchased and transported, and by whom. The question is whether the greater range of table settings evidenced at OKH for the earlier years is the result of more individualised choice among the different households during this period or the greater use of different dining settings by these households for different occasions, to display social status, despite the difficulties of acquiring such settings. The answer is likely to be a bit of both. Purchasing of teawares by the Kinchega Estate There are over 80 entries in the invoice books between April 1891 and March 1944 that refer to the purchasing of teawares by the estate and the supply to its employees. However, there are no teaware entries prior to June 1892 and, again, none in the latest invoice book. These entries include 434 cups and saucers, 98 probably enamel mugs, one gilded milk jug and three sugar bowls, one gilded and two glass (Appendix 6). They also include entries for 28 teapots, four coffee pots and one coffee percolator

Thus, like the tablewares, the teawares included in the invoice books were most probably not of the lowest quality, but also not of the highest. The most expensive decorated breakfast cups and saucers advertised by Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd in 1923 (1923: 370–71) were priced at between 4/6 each (£4 6s per dozen) and 9/6 each (£9 6s per 100

Purchasing Tablewares and Teawares for the Kinchega Pastoral Estate dozen). The most expensive entries in the estate invoice books were two dozen breakfast cups and saucers bought from the Australian China and Glass Co. in April 1922 at a cost of £3 8s 6d per dozen. Other cups and saucers listed in the estate invoice books during 1922 and 1923 range from 12/6 per dozen to £2 2s per dozen. Again, while these are not among the most expensive teawares listed in the trade catalogues, they are generally more expensive than the plain white English earthenware teawares, as, for example, those listed by Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd, which range from 9/- to 13/6 per dozen (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1923: 373). Again, some of the prices in the invoice books could be freight costs passed on by local retailers, but some of the sets are twice the price of the cheaper ones in the mail order catalogue.

1924, Anthony Horden & Sons Ltd was selling patterned teawares from 14/- per dozen for ‘White Ironstone’ to at least 84/- per dozen for Doulton bone china, white and gold sprig teacups and saucers for 16/6 to 18/6 per dozen, and gilt-edged cups and saucers for 15/- per dozen, with plain white teacups and saucers still priced between 9/and 13/6 per dozen (Anthony Horden and Sons 1924: 370–74). Given the evidently slightly higher cost for the ‘white and gold vessels in both the mail order catalogues and invoice books, these were no doubt more valued teawares than the plain vessels. Also, the ‘white and gold’ cups in the Kinchega Estate invoice books cost some 50 per cent more than those in Anthony Horden and Sons Ltd’s 1924 catalogue, an extra cost that may, at least in part, be attributable the relatively high quality of the Kinchega teawares.

Like the tablewares, the actual type of fabric is not usually recorded in the invoice books, although mugs are generally identified as enamel. Also, in October 1928, a dozen Wetley cups and saucers were purchased for Mulculca. Wetley made bone china, so the maker may have been referred to here because this was a higher-quality and more highly valued set than other teaware purchases. However, at 18/per dozen this is not an especially costly set.

After June 1925, there are no documented purchases of white and gold teawares in the Kinchega Estate invoice books. This suggests that the use of these particular cups and saucers in this context may have ceased after this date. Over the 30-year period from 1895 until 1925 (excluding the years between October 1915 and October 1919, for which the invoice books do not exist), more than three such cups were purchased each year, which would seem more than what might be expected to be normal household breakage, particularly if these gilded teawares were not being used on an everyday basis. However, these were probably purchased for three different homesteads. Ranging in cost from 7/6 to at least £1 2s per dozen over this 30-year period, these ‘white and gold’ teawares tended to be slightly more expensive than ‘Blue-Band’ and ‘blue line’ teawares and most of the unspecified teawares. The main exceptions are, again, breakfast cups and saucers purchased from: the Australian China and Glass Co., in April 1922, for £3 8s 6d per dozen; G. P. Harris Scarfe and Co., in February 1929, for £2 7s per dozen; and possibly also those from Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd, in December 1935, for £1 8s 6d, and in May 1939, for £1 11s per dozen. While these teawares may have been of higher value to the OKH occupants, particularly compared with most of those bought from local retailers, these costs are still below those for the patterned breakfast cups and saucers in these suppliers’ mail order catalogues.

The decoration of the teawares is sometimes recorded in the invoice books. For example, 12 ‘Blue Band’ cups and saucers were ordered in June 1905 and 11 ‘blue-line’ cups and saucers in June 1909 but, at 5/- and 7/- per dozen respectively, these, like the blue-lined tablewares, seem to be relatively cheap teawares. More significantly, there are frequent entries for ‘W & G’ (white and gold) cups and saucers from July 1895. Besides a ‘gold band’ ‘milk jug’ purchased in November 1899 and a ‘white and gold’ sugar bowl purchased in September 1908 (both seemingly teawares), at least 87 (over 20 per cent) of the 434 ceramic cups and saucers purchased between June 1892 and September 1943 were identified as white and gold. As was noted in the mail order catalogues, these vessels also appear to have been generally more expensive than some of the unspecified, probably plain white, wares. For example, a dozen ‘white and gold’ cups and saucers purchased from T. Reid, Broken Hill in September 1896 cost 7/6, whereas unspecified cups and saucers purchased from the same supplier in November 1896 cost 5/- per dozen. In June 1925, ‘white and gold’ cups and saucers purchased from G. Wood and Son cost £1 2s, whereas unspecified teawares from the same supplier that September cost 13/6 per dozen. There would seem be some inconsistency among the costs in the invoice books here, though, with some occasions where unspecified cups and saucers seemingly cost more than ‘white and gold’ ones. For example, unspecified cups and saucers purchased in May 1923 for Mulculca cost £1 2s 6d per dozen, a cost comparable to a dozen ‘white and gold’ cups purchased two years later in June 1925 for £1 2s per dozen. This cost inconsistency could be interpreted as some of these unspecified cups and saucers being decorated teawares, including ‘white and gold’, rather than plain white wares. This interpretation would concur with prices in contemporary mail order catalogues. That is, in

In summary, and irrespective of any freight costs involved, the costs and descriptions in these invoice books indicate that teawares purchased through the Kinchega Estate were not the cheapest available. While some were gilded and some could conceivably have been simply decorated, their costs indicate that these teaware purchases were also not usually among the more expensive decorated vessels listed in the mail order catalogues. Rather, the estate purchased what it probably considered were ‘decent’ teawares for its employees (see Allison 2003: 188). The cheaper, plainer teawares were probably purchased by the estate for everyday use, including the blue-banded and blue-lined teawares. ‘White and gold’ cups and saucers may have been purchased for more special settings and tea-drinking occasions. Given the relative quantities of ‘white and 101

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? gold’ teawares purchased, these occasions would either have been relatively frequent or involved reasonably large groups of people at any one time. It might seem from these records, though, that there was less, or no, requirement for ‘white and gold’ teawares and such occasions after about 1925. Some of the more expensive sets, especially the breakfast cups and saucers purchased from G. P. Harris Scarfe and Co. and from the Australian China and Glass Co., were possibly used for more formal occasions. Of interest here are the relatively high numbers of these cups and saucers specified as ‘breakfast’ cups and saucers, and also their relatively higher cost compared with those specified as ‘teawares’. For example, in March 1915, teacups and saucers purchased from G. P. Harris Scarfe and Co. cost 18/- per dozen, while breakfast cups and saucers from the same supplier cost 30/- per dozen. Generally, in the mail order catalogues larger breakfast cups and saucers were higher priced than teacups and saucers. For example, in 1914, Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd advertised goldhandled Royal Doulton ‘Leda Shape’ teacups and saucers for 18/- per dozen and breakfast cups and saucers for 23/per dozen. This comparison also indicates that the tea and breakfast wares purchased by the estate were likely have been of similar quality, if not higher, to these gilded Royal Doulton sets, implying genteel tea-drinking standards at one or more of the homesteads on the Kinchega Estate, if not OKH.

from the OKH, 151 individual vessels (c.50 per cent) were ‘white and gold’ (see Table 6.24). This represents more than twice the percentage of specified ‘white and gold’ teawares in the invoice books. This percentage does not include a further c.90 decorated OKH teawares. Again, it could conceivably result, in part, from sampling strategies, but would seem to indicate that these ‘white and gold’ teawares were destined for the homesteads rather than for use by other workers on these stations, as might be expected. Only one entry for ‘white and gold’ cups in the invoice books indicates the destination, and that was invoiced in July 1899 to the ‘house account’, which at that time would have been the Old Kinchega Homestead. All the datable ‘white and gold’ teawares from OKH date after 1900, but the invoice books record ‘white and gold’ teawares being purchased as least as early as 1895. Also, while ‘white and gold’ teawares were not recorded in the invoice books after June 1925, among the datable ‘white and gold’ teawares found at OKH the bone china vessels, those marked ‘Colclough’, and very probably those marked ‘Gladstone’, would have been purchased after 1925 (see chapter six, p. 72). This may also be the case for the ‘white and gold’ Japanese porcelain teawares, which can be dated after 1921, and one probably after 1933 (see chapter six, p. 76). It is therefore possible that the invoice books either stopped specifying that these were ‘white and gold’ after 1925, or indeed possible that such vessels were being purchased by individual households from the mid-1920s. Essentially, though, the estate invoice books demonstrate that the actual teaware remains recorded at OKH are comparable to those in these documentary records and that the cost, quality and quantities of the OKH teawares after 1890 reflect those purchased for the estate more broadly. Therefore, in general, these are teawares purchased for a fairly institutionalised standard of tea-drinking that was at least respectable and may have aspired to some level of gentility. It is conceivable that, after 1925, with more accessible transport for the OKH occupants, the estate no longer saw the need to be responsible for supplying its employees with better-quality teawares.

Again, the estate invoice books give no information on the purchasing of teawares prior to 1891, and so can only be used to throw light on the teawares recorded at the OKH, and related social practices, after that date. Some 70–80 per cent of these likely post-1890 teawares at OKH were bone china or porcelain, and most earthenware teawares were decorated. So, these teawares were very probably of better quality than comparable plain earthenware vessels. While some of this characterisation may result from the collection strategies, it is also borne out by the costs in the invoice books, which are generally higher than those for the plain earthenwares in the trade catalogues. The post1890 OKH teawares are also mainly either plain white or ‘white and gold’ teawares. There are small quantities of other types, such as dyed-body earthenwares or fluted Tuscan bone china, and decaled porcelain teawares, but it is not possible to identify these more decorative teawares in the invoice book entries. In the mail order catalogues, as discussed below, fluted wares were slightly more expensive than most plain bone china, so this example at OKH may have been an individual purchase, rather than an estate purchase. It is, however, conceivable that the seemingly everyday blue-banded porcelain teawares recorded at OKH (see Table 6.26) were those ‘Blue Band’ and ‘Blue Line’ teawares purchased relatively cheaply by the estate in June 1905 and June 1909, respectively. If so, then this may date these OKH teawares.

Cup sizes and occasions for drinking tea or coffee Very few of the cups recorded at OKH were identifiably of breakfast size (see chapter six, p. 90), and, equally, only a small proportion of those in the invoice books were identified as breakfast cups and saucers. The breakfast cups and saucers in the latter records, often notably more expensive than comparable tea or unidentified cups purchased at or about the same time, may have been used on more formal occasions, perhaps for guests’ breakfasts. Interestingly, enamel mugs in the invoice books supplied by G. Wood and Sons in 1941 cost 17/8 per dozen for a ¾  pint mug and 19/2 per dozen for a 1  pint mug, while other cups and saucers invoiced from the same supplier in November 1940 cost only 13/- per dozen. The higher costs of these mugs, despite their fabric, is probably related to their large size.

Numerous ‘white and gold’ cups and saucers were recovered from OKH. Of the remains of a total of some 306 individual cups and individual saucers of either plain white or ‘white and gold’ earthenware, bone china or porcelain recorded 102

Purchasing Tablewares and Teawares for the Kinchega Pastoral Estate As noted above, only six of the cups and saucers purchased by the estate between April 1891 and April 1944 are identified as coffee cups, although some of the unspecified teawares could have been used for coffee. However, 28 teapots were recorded in the estate invoice books, and only four coffee pots and one coffee percolator are listed (Appendix 7), indicating that, across the estate, tea was a more common drink than coffee. The analysis of a sample of consumables collated from the Kinchega Estate Store invoice books confirms that tea was purchased more frequently and in greater quantities than coffee (Appendix 8). For example, 185 lb of tea was purchased in May 1891, but only 30 lb of coffee. These relative proportions changed little throughout the period covered by the invoice books, with tea being purchased in 5–50 lb lots and coffee by the pound or half pound between 1915 and 1939. Also, more was being spent on tea. Much of this estate-purchased tea was no doubt destined for workers and shearers, though, and homestead occupants could conceivably have bought their own coffee, particularly in later years. The estate stores journals, between September 1915 and December 1919, indicate the distribution of tea between the different homesteads and ‘men’s rations’ and that ‘Kars house’, and possibly also ‘Kars cottage’, received a different, and perhaps better-quality, tea than OKH (see Allison n.d. 1). As noted in chapter six (p. 90), while some of the cups from OKH were of a size small enough to have served as coffee cups, none could be securely identified as only coffee cups (see chapter four, Table 4.2). And only teapots, and no coffee pots, were identified among the ceramic remains at OKH (see chapter six, Tables 6.9 and 6.27).

the nine most common patterns found in working-class households, but was likely to have been of comparable social value. As noted in chapter five (p. 48), Cable was common on urban sites, and remains with this relatively simple pattern type were recorded in a rubbish dump at the Conservatorium of Music site in Sydney, which has been interpreted as rubbish from the servants’ quarters of NSW Government House (see Casey and Lowe 1998– 2001; Casey 2005: 102, 109; see discussion in chapter eight, p. 113). It was also the sixth most common pattern found at rural sites across south-eastern NSW (Esposito 2014: 184). The OKH pre-1890 tableware sets can be identified as complementary rather than exactly matching sets, with possibly various further transfer-printed designs used to make up rather mismatched sets when vessels were broken (see Table 5.7). This might concur with what Gray referred to as an ‘obligation’ to form matching sets among middle-class gentility prior to 1880, rather than the ‘necessity’ after that date (2013: 34–35), and point more to social aspirations than to actual, middle-class gentility. Such aspirations are further borne out by the number of different sets used over ostensibly a 15-year period. However, the ranges of vessel types within some of these sets, such as in the Asiatic Pheasant and Rhine pattern sets (Tables 5.3 and 5.4), perhaps gave these sets a higher social value to their users than their initial cost and quality might indicate. It is also notable from the ranges and types of vessels in each set that these sets were likely to have been assembled and used for specific, different settings (i.e. breakfast, lunch and dinner). This suggests that these table settings indeed served to display a firm, rather than aspirational, nineteenth-century concept of middle-class gentility. The commonness of these sets was likely related more to accessibility in this isolated context than to actual price and broader contemporary, urban, ideas about social value. The patterns of these OKH sets were considered ‘reliable’ and ‘always popular’ in the trade catalogues, and may have provided these ‘long-distance consumers’ with a sense of social ‘security’ (Allison and Cremin 2006: 53), in that replacements could be relatively easily acquired to maintain genteel table settings on all occasions, during a period when market access was extremely restricted. In general, then, the ranges of vessel types within these sets, and the range of table settings, rather than the actual patterns, indicate a relatively well-laid table that, during the early years of the homestead, may have compared favourably with contemporary genteel urban table settings. It is notable that at least three of these sets may have been initially purchased before OKH, or any preceding homestead, was occupied, so these dining standards were brought to the region by these early settlers rather than having been developed here.

Cost, quality and social value of the OKH tablewares While price and quality can be related to fabric, pattern and shape, as Crook noted, there is no ‘neat-and-tidy litmus test’ for identifying social value accordingly (see chapter four, p. 43). That said, the combination of these factors, as discussed above, and concepts of matching sets and of complex and intricate table settings can be used in combination to identify social value. Assessment of the cost, quality and related social value of the tablewares from OKH identified as pre-1890 is largely based on Crook’s analyses (2008), not least because of the lack of further available mail order catalogues or estate bookkeeping records for this period. As noted above, and in chapter five, all the identified pre-1890 tablewares were earthenwares, and most were decorated with transferprinted patterns. The exception, in terms of decoration, is a set with a blue band-and-line pattern. A plain white earthenware set may also conceivably have existed prior to 1890 (see Table 5.25 and Appendix 4). As earthenwares, these tableware sets are not among the highest quality or the more costly dinner services, but this is largely true for most tablewares available in Australia. In addition, though the designs are common and relatively cheap types, most can also be found in households at The Rocks in Sydney identified as upper working class (Crook 2008: 237). One pattern type, Cable, was not identified by Crook as one of

After 1890, there is a noticeable change in the types of tableware sets at OKH. Firstly, there is evidence that a brand new, perfectly matching dinner set, Cuba, with platters, dinner and soup plates, was purchased sometime after this date. This set has not so far been identified in 103

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? the Australian trade catalogues nor seemingly on other Australian sites. It would, therefore, appear to be a relatively rare, asymmetrically patterned, and therefore rather fashionable, set for what might be considered, in other contexts, to be a more genuinely ‘genteel’ dinner table setting. The purchase and use of this particular set at this time – probably purchased by the homestead occupants rather than the estate – indicates that dining practices at OKH after 1890 were certainly superior to those of upper working-class households in The Rocks during this period, and perhaps also those of earlier OKH households with often old-fashioned and mismatched sets. In the latter case, though, this probably applied more in practice than necessarily in sentiment.

Seemingly even more ‘institutionalised’ among the post1890 sets was the large, amorphous, complementary set with a variety of relief-moulded patterns, but limited range of vessel types, which was probably purchased by the Kinchega Estate. Replacements were also likely to have been continuously purchased by the estate, perhaps through the OKH store. This set, probably originally purchased around 1912, was cheaper than the gilded dark blue-banded and 12-sided sets, according to comparative prices between earlier mail order catalogue entries for what were likely to be the latter sets (i.e. ‘Federal’ pattern, ‘Grecian White’ and ‘Imperial’ shape: p. 99), and the cost of the ‘embossed china’ purchased by the estate in 1941. Furthermore, a set of relief-moulded ‘Ensign White Granite’ was advertised in 1909 by Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd with 10½-inch plates priced at only 4/6 per dozen (1909: 380). This advertised set is similar to the OKH relief-moulded vessels, and considerably cheaper, despite its rather ostentatious name, than the other sets above. It is therefore likely that the amorphous relief-moulded set, or series of sets, at OKH was less valued by the homestead occupants than the three above – the Cuba, the gilded dark blue-banded and 12-sided sets – and was perhaps for everyday use by all station workers.

A 12-sided set, again with a range of vessel types, was purchased between 1914 and 1923. As discussed above, this set may have been the relatively readily available ‘semi-porcelain’ ‘Imperial shape’ or ‘Grecian white’ dinner set advertised in the trade catalogues. The relatively low cost of this type of set, compared with other sets advertised in the same catalogues, implies it was not particularly high in quality or social value. Nevertheless, it was likely to have been specially selected, again by the occupants rather than the estate, for its fashionable shape, its range of vessel types, and conceivably even the symbolic purity of its whiteness (see Spencer-Wood 2013: 185), and may have been valued by the OKH occupants to provide a striking and respectable, if not necessarily genteel, dinner table setting. It seems likely that it provided a less genteel setting than the, possibly earlier, Cuba set.

All these tableware sets are earthenware. No evidence was found at OKH for more expensive and higher-quality porcelain table settings, English or otherwise, that might be used by wealthy, and perhaps more upper middle-class, households (see Crook 2008: 151, 281). Nevertheless, these sets represent a considerable range of prices and no doubt social values, with some sets that were ‘institutionalised’ and others less so. They also demonstrate how the need for such table settings, and the composition and variety of settings, changed throughout the life of the homestead. These changes may have been less related to the downgrading of OKH from a manager’s family residence to an overseer’s family residence in 1915, and more a sign of changing social conditions and expectations throughout the period of the homestead’s occupation, as Victorian concepts of gentility and respectability become less necessary for the Australian middle classes. As noted above, the gilded dark blue-banded set may have provided a more genteel dinner setting than did the seemingly earlier, pre-First World War, 12-sided set, during a period of increased Britishness. At the same time, though, the likelihood that this dinner set served larger numbers of people is perhaps symbolic of Australian codes of hospitality.

These two post-1890 matching sets seem to have been ‘one-off ’ purchases, with perhaps a degrading of quality from c.1890 to after 1914. This degrading is not necessarily a degrading of the relative social value of these settings to the OKH occupants, but possibly representative of social change during the early twentieth century. The third clearly identifiable post-1890 dinner set was the gilded dark bluebanded complementary set, for which replacements were purchased, possibly from around 1912 until at least the late 1920s (see chapter five, pp. 51–52), although again seemingly not purchased by the estate. Nevertheless, the disparate dates of various components of this dinner set suggest it was perhaps a more ‘institutionalised’ set than the other two. While the set is gilded and includes a range of vessel types for a seemingly genteel dinner setting, it is possibly identified in the mail order catalogues as being a ‘dinner service of little money’. Also, if the comparative numbers of vessels are pertinent here (see Tables 5.9, 5.10 and 5.24), it would seem to have served larger gatherings of people. This implies an ‘institutionalised’ setting, very probably purchased in the interwar years by the homestead occupants themselves, and probably used for greater numbers of people for some level of status display during this period. Its seemingly aspirational gentility, or at least respectability, at this time might resonate with Lake’s ‘reinvigorated British imperialism’ and associated ‘Britishness’ in Australia after World War I (see chapter two, p. 15).

Cost, quality and social value of the OKH teawares The lack of available mail order catalogues and estate bookkeeping records, as well as lack of comparable analysis by Crook, means that the cost, quality and associated social value of the likely pre-1890 teawares from the OKH are difficult to assess. As was the case for the pre-1890 tablewares, these teawares were predominantly transferprinted earthenwares, although one decorated bone china set is datable to this period (see Table 6.7). So, possibly, were further simply decorated porcelain vessels and a hand104

Purchasing Tablewares and Teawares for the Kinchega Pastoral Estate painted bone china cup (see Table 6.26). The hand-painted cup (cat. no. DD/513/0004 – Figure 146) was probably of a good quality, and potentially relatively high social value. These decorated teawares were unlikely to have been purchased by the Kinchega Estate as ‘institutionalised’ sets, as no decorated teawares are listed among the teawares in the estate records. Like the contemporary tableware sets, these seemingly relatively smaller teaware sets were probably brought to the homestead or purchased by its occupants. No plain and ‘white and gold’ teawares of pre1890 date can be identified among the OKH remains, largely because of a lack of marks to date these to this period (see chapter six, pp. 70–76). However, no ‘white and gold’ teawares were recorded in the estate invoice books before 1895.

teaware remains from OKH and vessels illustrated in the mail order catalogues. These catalogues do not always indicate the fabric, however, so comparing prices, and potential value, by shape alone is not straightforward. There are some exceptions, though, where vessels are illustrated or are those for which the shape is identifiable, and for which information on fabric and patterns is also provided. For example, some Minton-shaped cups are identified as earthenware and some as bone china. Table 7.1 lists examples of decorated and gilded and plain cup shapes recorded at OKH, and compares them with examples of equivalent cup shapes in Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd catalogues. The prices for the latter are then used to assess the likely values of the former. Post-1890 Wattle patterned cups, of which one was recorded at OKH with a slightly everted rim, straight sides and rounded body (cat. no. DD/555/0009 – Figure 107), are advertised in Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd trade catalogue (1909: 370), with a collection of ‘Brown or Green’ printed patterns priced at 4/6 per dozen. Although the Wattle pattern is not illustrated, the shape of the cup fragment from the OKH is similar to the central one of those shown as this ‘Brown or Green’ category in the catalogue. The price for this shape and decoration, at 4/6 per dozen, is one of the cheaper patterns for the decorated earthenware cups and saucers advertised in the 1909 catalogue, cheaper than ‘White and Gold Earthenware … suitable for Restaurant use’ (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1909: 370; cf. Myers 2016).

These decorated teaware sets, and particularly some of the bone china ones, were probably the more highly valued teawares at OKH. That said, flaws were identified in the decoration of some of the likely pre-1890 earthenware transfer-printed vessels, among both tablewares and teawares, but particularly teawares. For example: the serving dish fragment cat. no. A02Ver/056/0098 (Figure 29) has a mismatched blue transfer print; fragments from two cups with a ‘Honeysuckle’ pattern (cat. no. DD/822/0016 – Figures 76 and 77 – and cat. no. DD/811/0017 – Figures 78 and 79) have a blurred transfer-printed pattern on the interior rim and mismatched pattern on the exterior; a cup fragment (cat. no. DD/534/0017 – Figure 90) has a messy purple transfer at rim; another cup fragment (cat. no. DD/599/0004 – Figure 95) has an uneven application of green transfer print on interior of the cup; another cup fragment (cat. no. DD/507.15/0119 – Figure 96) is missing parts of the brown transfer print; and the transfer print on a Willow pattern cup (cat. no. DD/536/0013a – Figure 144) has been torn at the rim on application and is blurred in parts. In addition to these flaws in the decoration among the transfer-printed earthenwares, the glaze on the porcelain green-banded and gilded cup (DD/809/0001 – Figure 148) is pitted, another of the ‘quality flaws’ noted by Crook (2008: 198). These are the types of imperfection which Crook noted on ‘seconds’ (2008: 212). While these remains were mainly small fragments, and the identification of flaws was not a focus of this study, no prominent flaws were noted on complete or near complete vessels. This suggests that any presence of flaws among the OKH ceramics was minor and insufficient to indicate that these transfer-printed sets would have been of a lower quality than those in comparable urban contexts. It is conceivable that the extra transport costs involved for outback consumers meant that the seconds market was likely to have been more limited for them than for consumers in Sydney.

Remains of a number of cups which have flaring straight sides, and are rounded at the base edge (e.g. cat. no. DD/521/0005 – Figure 117), were found at OKH, including the remains of two marked bone china ‘Gladstone China’ cups, dated 1924–40 (see Table 6.10, e.g. cat. no. DD/508.03/0025b – Figure 114). These are similar to the Minton shape advertised in the Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd catalogues from 1907 to 1942. This shape appears to be in a lower price bracket than comparable vessels of different shapes in these trade catalogues. For example, in 1930, the ‘Best English China Minton Shape Tea Cups’ with a gold line and sprig were priced at 12/- per dozen, which is lower than the Carlton shape ‘Gold edge’ and the Silver shape ‘Gold line’, both 13/6 per dozen (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1930: 74–75). This implies that the ‘white and gold’ OKH vessels were not among the higher-priced sodecorated vessels, and therefore not among the highest social status teawares of this type available. Cups from OKH with slightly flaring sides, a rounded lower body and open bracket ring handle (e.g. cat. no. DD/822/0009 – Figure 137) are similar to the Paris shape advertised in Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd catalogues from 1912 to 1934. Again, this shape is in the lower price range. For example, in 1924, Paris teacups with ‘White and Gold Sprig’ decoration were priced at 16/6 per dozen, while ‘White and Gold’ Silver shaped teacups were 18/6 per dozen (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1924: 374 U102).

Shape and relative costs and value As noted above, the shapes of teacups can indicate their relative prices and quality, and therefore likely relative value. While information on cup shape is not recorded in the estate bookkeeping records, comparisons can be made between the identified shapes of the probable post-1890 105

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 7.1. Teacup shapes recorded at OKH and compared with similar examples from Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd trade catalogues. Old Kinchega Homestead cups Lower body

Handle

Examples of Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd trade catalogue entries

Cat. nos. and decoration

Side profile

DD/555/0009 Wattle

slightly everted rounded lower not known rim; straight-sided body

‘Brown or Green patterns’ (1909: 370)

DD/591/0003 ‘white and gold’

slightly everted rounded at base voluted ear-shaped ring rim; straight-sided edge handle with open bracket

no similar shapes found

DD/508.03/0025 ‘white and gold’

flaring straightsided

rounded at base unknown edge

Minton shape (1924: 373 U121)

DD/822/0009 ‘white and gold’

slightly flaring straight-sided

rounded lower open bracket ring body

Paris shape (1924: 374 U101)

DD/566/0004 ‘white and gold’

slightly flaring straight-sided

not known

block handle

possibly similar to Perth shape (1924: 373 U117)

DD/576/0038 plain

vertically straightnot known sided

ear-shaped

possibly similar to Worcester shape (1924: 373 U118)

DD/565/0010 plain

fluted

DD/524/0002 pink dyed-body

everted rim; fluted rounded lower ear-shaped upper half body

no similar shapes found

DD/522/0008 dark yellow dyed-body

rounded upper half; flaring, slightly fluted

similar to cup shape in Grosvenor tea set (1947: 22 151T2)

rounded body; flat base with not known no foot

rounded lower ear-shaped half

In addition to ear-shaped and open bracket ring handles, another type of cup handle identified at OKH has an in-filled ring bracket and is known as a block handle. An example is cat. no. DD/566/0004 (Figure 151), which has slightly flaring, straight sides and ‘white and gold’ decoration. This cup is similar to the Perth shape advertised in the Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd catalogues from 1912 to 1924, although the specific base shape of the OKH cups with this type of handle is not identifiable. The Perth shape was one of the cheaper cup shapes in the mail order catalogues. For example, in 1924, plain white Perth-shaped teacups were priced at 9/6 per dozen, while plain white St Denis-shaped teacups were priced at 13/6 per dozen (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1924: 373).

Lily shape (1913: 1244)

indicate that this cup was similar to the Lily shape cup advertised in Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd catalogues from 1907 to 1924. The Lily shape is in the lower price range for fluted cups, but not the cheapest. For example, in 1914, Lily ‘gold edge’ teacups were priced at 6/6 per dozen, while Richelieu shape fluted ‘gold edge’ teacups were 6/3 per dozen, and Empress shape fluted plain white cups 7/6 per dozen (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1914: 1349–51). The yellow-bodied cups from OKH marked Laburnum Petal and Grindley (1936–54) (see Table 6.8, e.g. cat. no. DD/522/0008 – Figure 109) are similar in shape to illustrated cups which are part of an ‘English “Grosvenor” Bone China Tea Set’, priced at £7 19s 6d for 21 pieces, and also to those in a Meakin ‘Utility Set’ containing 41 pieces and priced at £6 1s 6d (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1947: 22–23). The former illustrated cups are slightly wider than those found at OKH, and the latter slightly taller. This shape, with rounded upper and lower halves, does not appear in the 1930s catalogues. The Grosvenor set is more expensive than another, differently shaped, 21-piece set advertised in the same catalogue – an ‘English Foley Bone China’ set priced at £6 8s 6d. The Grindley cups, however, are earthenware, so were probably lower-priced than bone china sets of this type. There are no comparative earthenware cups found in the Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd catalogues.

Straight-sided cups were the most common type identified at OKH. Some appear to be similar to the Worcester shape (e.g. cat. no. DD/576/0038 – Figure 131) which is advertised in the Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd catalogues from 1912 to 1928, sometimes with ear-shaped handles and sometimes with block handles. The Worcester-shaped cups advertised in 1924 were 9/- to 12/6 per dozen, and so are comparable in price to the Perth-shaped and St Denis-shaped cups, noted above. Although straight-sided cups were the most common shape recorded at OKH, it is not always clear from the extant remains whether they are more vertical like the Worcester shape or slightly flaring like the Perth shape, but both are among the cheaper cup shapes in the trade catalogues.

Quality of fabric and decoration and relative value

Fluted cups are not common at OKH. However, remains of a plain fluted cup with a flat base and marked ‘Tuscan China’ (cat. no. DD/565/0010 – Figures 124 and 125)

It appears from these comparisons of post-1890 teawares cup shapes recorded at OKH that they were predominantly in the lower price bracket. There are some further 106

Purchasing Tablewares and Teawares for the Kinchega Pastoral Estate such as the Wattle pattern – 4/9 per dozen compared with 4/6 per dozen (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1909: 370). These gilded teawares made up a minority of the entries in the estate invoice books. As argued in chapter six (pp. 86–88), though, teawares recorded at OKH show little evident distinction between the ‘white and gold’ and plain white teawares in terms of quantities. The considerably higher percentages of ‘white and gold’ teawares at OKH compared with the estate invoice books could result from the sampling procedures, but would, nevertheless, confirm that this homestead, and probably the other homesteads on the estate, were the destinations for the ‘white and gold’ teawares recorded in the invoice books. The seemingly higher quantities of plain white teawares purchased by the estate after 1890 suggests they were likely to have been the main, probably more everyday teawares for both managers’ and overseers’ households as well as for homestead and other station workers. That said, considerable numbers of enamel mugs were still being purchased by the estate, a type of teaware used by station workers, but less so by homestead occupants, and rarely found on archaeological sites.

indications among the OKH teawares, aside from actual flaws discussed above, that they, and their matched sets, may have been of inferior quality, and therefore potentially low social value, compared to the trade catalogue pricing. One example, as is apparent from the discussion in chapter six, is that approaches to the selection of ‘white and gold’ teawares show either a lack of opportunity or lack of will to select tea sets where the arrangements of the gilded lines matched perfectly. Another example is the fabric and decoration in the porcelain green-banded and gilded tea set (see Table 6.26). The formation of the rim of the cup (DD/809/0001 – Figure 148) and the application of green decoration to this rim indicate a rather inferior-quality vessel, despite the gilding and the porcelain fabric. We also observed that some of the porcelain cups were rather heavy and chunky, again suggesting relatively low quality. It might be argued from these observations of some of the porcelain teawares and particularly the imperfectly matched gilding, shapes and fabrics of the ‘white and gold’ tea sets, that these tea sets might be used for respectable rather than genteel settings in Victorian terms. However, many of these tea sets date after this period. In addition, the remote context in which they were used may have made such less than perfect tea sets less evidently of lower social value than they may have been perceived in more urban contexts, even in a period of reintroduced Britishness.

Thus, despite the relative quantities of ‘white and gold’ and plain white teawares at OKH, the evidence from the invoice books and also the price differences indicate that the former were likely to have been of higher value to the OKH occupants. They may have been used for different occasions, or by different people, but for occasions that included much greater numbers of guests than would seem to be the case prior to 1890. However, the costs in the invoice books imply that even the plain teawares purchased by the estate were probably not the cheapest available. The limited number of the cheapest earthenwares compared with the bone china and porcelain at OKH, in either ‘white and gold’ or plain white, would seem to confirm this. Thus, these tea sets may have offered to greater numbers of people hospitality that had a sense of middle-classness akin to Victorian gentility, or at least respectability.

Generally, the OKH teawares were not always of the lowest quality. Although not possible to verify through the catalogues, as discussed in chapter four (see pp. 42–43), the transfer-printed earthenware tea sets at OKH were probably among the cheaper types of such patterns. However, the plain fluted tea set, while relatively inexpensive, was not among the cheaper plain sets. The small sizes of the fluted set and the Grindley set suggest that they were probably used for more intimate, ‘tête à tête’, gatherings and, for this reason, more highly valued than the more extensive and mismatched ‘white and gold’ teawares, whether because they only ever existed in small numbers or because they were more carefully curated.

Summary

Thus, among the probable post-1890 teawares from OKH, any finely decorated bone china and porcelain (e.g. with floral patterns), and the plain fluted (i.e. cat. nos. DD/565/0010 – Figures 124 and 125 – and DD/572/006 – Figure 123) teawares were probably the more highly valued, particularly if gilded (see e.g. cat.no. DD/571/0001 – Figure 140). That such sets are not clearly identifiable in the estate bookkeeping records suggests they may have been purchases made by individual households, possibly reinforcing their higher, possibly more genteel, value. Next in price and likely value were probably the ‘white and gold’ teawares, frequently purchased by the estate but in such quantities that they were probably either used fairly frequently, or used for relatively large gatherings. In the Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd catalogue for 1909, ‘White and Gold Earthenware Cups’ were advertised as ‘suitable for Restaurant use’ and were slightly higher priced than green or ‘Green or Brown’ transfer-printed earthenwares,

Crook observed that the nineteenth-century ceramic and glassware found on most archaeological sites would have been relatively small expenses for middle-class families, and also for many upper working-class families (2008: 280). In particular, she noted the relatively cheap cost of some of the types of tablewares that were recorded OKH, although she also noted that there were inconsistencies among the sets in terms of the relative costs of certain vessel types (Crook 2005: 19–20). In the above discussions, analyses of the information from mail order catalogues, but more importantly from the Kinchega Pastoral Estate bookkeeping records, have been used to better understand purchasing procedures for tablewares and teawares at OKH, the cost and quality of these vessels, and their likely value to the OKH inhabitants. These analyses give insights into the types and social statuses of the table settings (including for tea-drinking) at OKH, and into the types of social interactions they may document. What 107

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? is particularly notable here is a kind of ‘institutionalised’ approach of the Kinchega Estate to the table settings of its employees, at all levels, perhaps comparable to Owens and Jeffries’ observation of tablewares as ‘part of the stock of equipment supplied by a landlord’ in nineteenth-century houses in London (2016: 821).

were indeed made at considerable effort, which indicates the importance of such sets, to OKH households if not necessarily to the estate, for demonstrating their cultural affiliations and social ranking. As the estate grew in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in both size (see Kearns 1970: 3–4) and number of employees, and became more established, it seems to have become more expedient, and perhaps more feasible, for the estate to supply all its employees with tablewares and teawares that were both basic and for more formal settings, although perhaps not the most genteel in terms of price and perceived value. With the exception of enamel tablewares, some having to be purchased from Adelaide in the 1890s, the estate does not seem to have provided its employees with the cheapest available tablewares and teawares, but to have been concerned to provide at least its managers and overseers with table settings that were at least respectable. As the twentieth century progressed, the estate seems less concerned with such standards, and to have provided more amorphous types of table settings, with a less diverse range of vessel types, across all estate employees, with fewer social distinctions among them. Some of the more complex and more distinctive table settings evidenced among the remains at OKH and dated after 1890 may still have been purchased by individual households. Again, both tablewares and teawares seem mainly to have comprised relatively inexpensive settings, but notably larger sets than the pre-1890 ones.

Such ‘institutionalisation’ of table settings is not evident in the first 15 to 20 years of the occupation of OKH, however. While it might be argued that this is because the bookkeeping records are not available prior to 1891, this lack of ‘institutionalisation’ in the earlier years is also evident from the ceramics themselves. In the first instance, there are examples of both tablewares and teawares that were produced up to 50 years before this homestead was built, suggesting that these sets were either heirlooms or bought second hand, both of which possibilities seem unlikely to result from estate purchases. The range of differently decorated but smaller tableware and teaware sets during this earlier period also suggests more personalised purchasing procedures. It therefore seems probable that all the earlier transfer-printed sets recorded at OKH were not purchased by the estate but were the personal purchases or possessions of managers’ or overseers’ families. In addition, ‘white and gold’ teawares do not seem to have been purchased prior to 1895, which suggests that this ‘institutionalisation’ of seemingly relatively genteel teawares was probably less apparent, and perhaps considered less important prior to this date. This may appear to be an argument ex silentio, given the dates covered by the surviving bookkeeping records. However, there is also a lack of reporting of any patterned ceramics in the invoice books after 1890, implying that, throughout the life of the homestead, transfer-patterned or decorated tablewares and teawares recorded at OKH, with the exception of ‘white and gold’ teawares, were purchases of the OKH occupants themselves rather than of the estate.

After 1925, there seems to have been a further change. At this time, when transport was even more readily available to Menindee, both from Sydney and from Adelaide through Broken Hill, and there were likely to be fewer employees on the estate, the estate seems only to have provided very basic table settings for all its employees, except possibly the managers at Kars Station. To maintain table settings to achieve social aspirations that were above those of the other workers and shearers, overseers’ families at OKH may have had to purchase at least some of their own better-quality, but again relatively inexpensive, tablewares and teawares. With better transport systems from the late 1920s, this would have been a much easier task for them than prior to this date. The lack of entries for tableware in the last invoice book, from April 1944 to September 1949, may also bear witness to this change in purchasing practices.

While mail order catalogues were available from the 1870s, and navigation had begun on the Darling River by the time OKH was occupied, the estate was perhaps more focused on building up its pastoral business than concerning itself with appropriate table settings for its employees. However, it is evident that the managers’ households who lived here during this period had at least one, if not more, earthenware transfer-printed tableware sets of a relatively inexpensive pattern for diverse types of settings that included a range of vessel types, if probably limited in quantities of vessels, for a conspicuous genteel table display. They also probably had several small decorated ‘tête à tête’ teaware sets, with which they could partake in genteel tea-drinking. The individual households of managers and overseers on the estate may have been responsible for bringing such goods with them when they took up residence here or purchased at least parts of them after arrival. Acquiring sets, or parts of sets, as individual orders through mail order catalogues, once in residence, would have been difficult but not impossible. The evidence at OKH suggests that such acquisitions

Essentially, there seems to be more individuality of settings in the earlier years, possibly out of necessity, but perhaps also out of a stronger nineteenth-century sense of the necessity to maintain Victorian middle-class dining and teadrinking standards. After 1925, this was likely to have again been more an individuality of choice. While transport and communication systems play an important role here, so do the social aspirations of the households who occupied OKH, in their attempts to meet the requirements and fashions of wider Australian society and its fluctuating concerns for Britishness and associated social codes and values.

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8 Comparing Australian Households for Social Status and Social Aspirations through their Ceramic Sets P. Allison and V. Esposito Introduction

on the premises that more genteel middle-class households are likely to have proportionately more matching sets among their tablewares and teawares, and also a greater range of vessels within their tableware sets for more complex dinner settings and conspicuous table display. Because the actual assemblages recorded from each of the comparative sites is quantitatively different, these proportions have been calculated as ratios of sherds and MNVs, or similar. Analyses of the former ratios are used as control for the analyses of the latter, or where the latter are not available. Any likely exceptions to these premises are discussed: for example, the potential for larger sets to produce lower ratios.

The previous chapters comprise detailed analyses of the tableware and teawares from OKH, the likely sets that they formed, and the likely costs and value of these sets according to comparisons with similar vessels recorded in Australian mail order catalogues and in the Kinchega Pastoral Estate’s bookkeeping records. As highlighted in chapter seven, these documentary records give us insights into the relative costs, quality and likely values of some of the post-1890 tablewares and teawares at OKH, and what these might tell us about the social status and aspirations of its inhabitants, and their codes of hospitality. Such records are not available for the pre-1890 period, however. For this earlier phase of OKH occupancy, some insights into values and associated social standings of the occupants can be reached by comparing the quality of the tablewares, teawares, and quantities of matching sets from this homestead with those in ceramic assemblages from other Australian sites. As noted in chapter four, four key criteria for establishing middle-class gentility through ceramics are: matching sets; variations of vessel forms; consistency among the ceramics used by the household when alone or when entertaining guests; and keeping up with fashion (see Hayes 2011: 33).

While the chapter will attempt to make direct comparisons with material from other sites, there are three main problems that make specific comparisons rather difficult. The first concerns the different chronological contexts and ranges, and any chronological phasing within these ranges. For the purposes of these analyses, direct comparisons will be made between the complete chronological ranges at these other, mainly nineteenth-century, sites and the earlier pre-1890 phase at OKH, with chronological differences taken into consideration where appropriate. The second problem concerns the various typologies, the different classifications and analytical approaches to the ceramics at each site, and the different levels of detail in their analyses. For example, at some of these sites the transfer-printed patterns are tabulated by colour rather than actual pattern, and it is difficult to relate the patterns identified to the vessel counts. Also, plain wares are not usually included in the analyses, or an explanation provided of the processes for counting MNVs (minimum number of vessels), MVCs (minimum vessel count), MNIs (minimum number of items) or MICs (minimum item count). Thirdly, particular sets are not always clearly identified, and definitions of sets are not consistently identified either, particularly as to whether they are matching or complementary. As outlined in chapter four, the definition used in this study for the OKH assemblage is more conservative for tableware sets than in most cases, but not necessarily for tea sets. So, the figures in Appendix 9 and discussed below are not consistently derived across these sites. Nevertheless, they serve to provide an impression of the relative numbers and types of tableware and teaware sets at each site for insights into the relative social status and aspirations of the users of the tableware and teaware sets recorded at OKH. The figures for number of sets include both complementary and matching sets. As noted in chapter six (pp. 90–91),

As outlined in the introduction, most investigations in Australian historical archaeology have concerned the nineteenth century, and no similar material-cultural studies of Australian outback pastoral homesteads have been carried out.26 Using relative numbers and types of tableware and teaware sets and types of decoration as likely indicators of social distinction, comparative analyses are carried out to assess the likely social values of the OKH tableware and teaware sets, particularly the pre-1890 sets, against those of these less physically remote fellow Australians, and, accordingly, the relative statuses of the homestead occupants within Australia’s social hierarchy. This chapter, therefore, makes comparisons between the sets identified at OKH and those from roughly contemporary urban and semi-rural archaeological sites for which concepts of matching sets have been or can be discussed, at least to some extent. These analyses are based

26 Paterson (2011: 259) has made some general comparisons among the assemblages of transfer-printed ceramics recorded across the different residences of the Old Sherlock Station, in north-west Western Australia, abandoned in the late 1880s. Paterson noted ‘strong social patterning’ among these different residences.

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Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Crook (2000) analysed the ceramic remains from five houses in The Rocks and identified 13 ‘mismatched’ tableware sets, although she did not define these. As outlined in chapter four, she later defined matching sets as ‘individual vessels bearing the same pattern, form and maker’s mark’ (Crook 2008: 237). The ‘mismatched’ sets might be best defined as complementary sets. The five houses in The Rocks for which Crook identified these sets were 128 Cumberland Street, 1 Carahers Lane, 4 Carahers Lane, 4 Cribbs Street, and the rear of the Whalers’ Arms Hotel at 95 Gloucester Street, for which she provided refined dating for their occupancy (see Appendix 9).28 The dates for each house’s construction and occupancy indicate that most of the assemblages may have belonged to a c. 50year period, within which our earliest ceramic phase at OKH (i.e. c.1876–1890) fits.

the concept of teaware sets seems to break down during the early twentieth century, so useful comparisons with teaware sets from other twentieth century assemblages are often not tenable. Comparative urban and semi-rural sites in Australia The following house sites have been chosen as they have the some of the best, if not comprehensive or consistent, information available on the specific ceramics types excavated at each site, and some information on the numbers and types of tableware and teaware sets, and on the social status of the households. Lawrence noted (2000: 135) that most studies of the significance of ceramic assemblages have been confined to the ‘metropolitan bourgeoisie’. However, we have found useful studies with relatively comparable data at seemingly working-class urban sites, and semi-rural sites.

At 128 Cumberland Street was a conjoining terrace, built c.1833, with a c.45 sq. m footprint. This house had a number of short-term tenancies, and one 11-year tenancy, of William Lipscombe (clerk/accountant), from 1859–64 (Crook 1999: 23, 30, fig. 4.2). Between 1880 and 1896, it was rented by Stephen Doyle and his wife Margaret (a publican) (Crook et al. 2005: 69, 95, 202; Crook 2008: 219). At this stage, Stephen Doyle had been insolvent and was a painter and decorator, and then he died in 1881. However, Margaret and the younger of their two daughters continued to live there until at least 1908, and Margaret’s sister, Charlotte, probably lived there until 1919. This house was not demolished until 1938 (Crook et al. 2005: 19). Crook identified the long Doyle family occupancy of this house as that of ‘life after bankruptcy’ (Crook et al. 2005: 168– 71) but noted that the ‘Doyle assemblage was ‘one of the “better” assemblages with regard to the range of materials and vessel types’ (Crook 2008: 219). While the assemblage from this house site, analysed by Crook (2000: 21–23 and table 2), could have covered nearly a 100-year period, much of it would seem to be have been from a pre-1860 cesspit, so could have dated prior to the Doyle occupancy.

‘Working-class’ urban households The Rocks, Sydney Penny Crook (Crook 2000; Crook et al. 2005) and Jane Lydon (1995) analysed ceramic assemblages from the excavations of dwellings at the Cumberland and Gloucester Street site in the Rocks area on the Sydney foreshore.27 Some of these dwellings were potentially extant for some 100 years, from c.1830 until they were destroyed c.1930. However, at the beginning of the twentieth century much of the area was condemned as insanitary, and many houses were considered dilapidated and destroyed (for references: Crook 2008: 212). The artefact assemblages recorded from these dwellings, including tablewares and teawares, were from cesspits, backyards or underfloor deposits associated with them (Crook 2000: 21). While these assemblages could ostensibly cover the whole c.100-year occupancy period, many of the cesspit finds are likely to have predated the sewerage system of the mid-late 1860s (Crook et al. 2005: 36–37), and most of the house sites included here were essentially abandoned at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Nos. 1 and 3 Carahers Lane was a double terrace built between 1845 and 1848 as two rental properties, each with a c.45 sq. m footprint, and demolished in 1902 (Crook 1999: 30, fig. 42; Crook et al. 2005: 46–47). A number of different families had short tenancies at no. 1, with the longer tenancies including: the Wilson family, in 1848– 56, and also later, in 1867; Thomas and Elizabeth Hines (1877–87); and James and Margaret Foy (1890–1900) (Crook et al. 2005: 51). The recorded occupations of the numerous occupants included mariner, waterman, grocer, confectioner, labourer, hotel-keeper and engineer (Crook et al. 2005: 52–57). The artefact assemblage from the cesspits of this house would seem to date mainly c.1860 (Crook et al. 2005: 48–50) but Crook’s initial analysis (2000) also included that of underfloor deposits for this house (see Crook et al. 2005: 152, n.1), which may have dated to the later nineteenth century.

There were some owner-occupied houses in The Rocks prior to 1830, but the dwellings on the site of the Cumberland and Gloucester Street excavations were largely tenantoccupied (Crook et al. 2005: 17–18). Through genealogical and archival research, it has been possible to identify some of the occupants of these dwellings during this period, and their occupations, which provide insights into their socioeconomic status (Crook et al. 2005: 17–18). Consequently, scholars have argued that the families who lived in The Rocks were working class, but semi-skilled or skilled (Crook et al. 2005: 11, 135; Crook 2008: 231), upwardly mobile and ‘struggl[ing] for respectability’ (Karskens 1999: 161–66). 27 These two studies by Crook provide more useful comparative information on sets and building occupants than can be found in her thesis (see Crook 2008: esp. 207–20).

Assemblages from further houses in The Rocks analysed by Crook et al (2005: esp. 144–57) have not been included for comparison here.

28

110

Comparing Australian Households for Social Status and Social Aspirations through their Ceramic Sets Nos. 2 and 4 Carahers Lane were two tiny residences across the lane from no. 5, at the rear of the Whalers’ Arms Hotel (Crook et al. 2005: 20), which had been converted from part of a stable block in 1848 or 1858 (see also Crook 1999: 19). No. 4, with a c.14 sq. m footprint (Crook 1999: 30, fig. 4.2), had numerous short-lived tenancies (Crook 1999: 23), which included those of Thomas Verrell (waterman) in 1871 (Crook 1999: 30, fig. 42; Crook et al. 2005: 123); Peter Johnson (occupation unknown) in 1890–92 (Crook et al. 2005: 116); and Alice Gilson (or Gibson) prior to her death in 1902 (Crook et al. 2005: 102). It was pulled down after 1907. The description of the house and what is known about its occupants suggest they were not of a particularly high socioeconomic status, even in relation to this neighbourhood. The assemblage analysed by Crook would seem to have been from underfloor deposits (Crook 1999: 19).

1,069 artefacts comprising about 10 per cent of the whole deposit were collected and analysed (Casey 2005: 101–105). On the basis of a 1908 household inventory and the types of material in this deposit, Mary Casey identified it as rubbish dump from the servants’ quarters of Government House, and dated its use from c.1840 into the early twentieth century (2005: 97, 99–101, 109), which embraces the pre-1890 phase at OKH. She analysed the selected artefact assemblage from context 850 according to general function and vessel form but, again, did not analyse the ceramics in terms of sets. Nevertheless, the types and patterns and vessel numbers she has described from this deposit as tablewares, serving and teawares (Casey 2005: 102–104) can give some indications of potential numbers of ceramic tableware and teaware sets. Port Adelaide, South Australia

A residence was built at 4 Cribbs Lane c.1854, with a c.42 sq. m footprint, and demolished in 1915 (Crook 1999: 30, fig. 42). Sarah Lewis and John McKinley (occupation not specified) resided at 4 Cribbs Lane from 1877 to 1894 (Crook et al. 2005: 103). Distinct underfloor and yard deposits with artefact assemblages were identified for this house (Crook 1999: 28).

Susan Briggs (2005) studied artefact groups from three case studies excavated in Port Adelaide, South Australia, to investigate working-class attitudes to respectability over the 60-year period from 1840–1900. Her study included a detailed investigation of the ceramics, through which she identified tableware and teaware sets to assess such respectability, which she later defined as ‘sufficiently fulfilling the [nineteenth-century] ideology of domesticity’ (Lampard 2009: 50). The first case study comprised some two to four houses at no. 15 Quebec Street, which were small two- and four-roomed rental houses with a high turnover of highly mobile tenants, among whom were the families of Charles and Mary Wynes (a laundress) (Lampard 2009: 52), Joseph Martin (sailor and labourer), William Williamson (deserter and labourer) and William Forbes (saddler) (Briggs 2005: 71–83). According to Lampard (2005: 50), a working wife, such as Mary Wynes was, would have defined this family as working class. One of these cottages is still extant, while others were probably demolished by c.1900. Excavations were carried out in the rear yard of allotment 108, which revealed the demolished cottages (Briggs 2005: 44, fig. 3.4) and produced some 1,678 ceramic fragments (Briggs 2005: 92).

At the rear of 95 Gloucester Street were also stables, built c.1830 and then converted into a one-room residence, with a c.6 sq. m footprint, that was abandoned c.1901 (Crook 1999: 30, fig. 4.2; 34). Crook described this house as ‘stereotypical slum housing’. An extensive deposit and artefact assemblage was preserved by the demolition material (Crook 1999: 21). A five-house brick terrace was erected at 103–11 Gloucester Street by the ex-convict John Jobblins in 1858 (Lydon 1995: 80). Among Jobblins’ tenants was Mrs Ann Lewis, who kept a boarding house between 1861 and 1873, mainly at 111 Gloucester Street. Excavations in the rear yard of this house revealed a cesspit into which over 400 objects had been thrown, probably within a very short period sometime after 1865 (Lydon 1995: 81). Lydon analysed the assemblage from a cesspit deposit which included the remains of numerous complete vessels, among which were a number of breakfast cups and saucers, all of a similar size. According to Lydon (1995: 82–83), they were of different transfer-printed patterns and colours and included white moulded types, so did not form a service. She argued that the assemblage from this boarding house created ‘a picture … of a family environment’ (1995: 84). Unfortunately, Lydon has not provided precise vessel and set counts or defined a set or a service. Nevertheless, and although the assemblage may be earlier than that at OKH, her analyses are useful for comparison here.

The other two case studies at Port Adelaide comprised two cottages in Jane Street, which were largely owner-occupied, by the McKays and the Farrows respectively (Briggs 2005: 5). The McKay cottage was bought by George McKay (sailmaker and Master Mariner) in 1849 (Briggs 2005: 87–90) and occupied by him and his family from at least 1863–76. This cottage was then occupied by William Hack before being demolished sometime after 1900. The Farrow cottage was owned, and probably occupied, by John Farrow (labourer) from 1855–85, after which it was rented by Margaret Malone and then Lewis Raynor and his family, whose occupations are not provided by Briggs (2005: 84– 87). It was probably demolished in 1891. Excavation were undertaken under a car park that had replaced these two cottages in Jane Street after their demolition (Briggs 2005: 50–52). The excavations of the McKay cottage produced 1,893 ceramic fragments, and those of the Farrow cottage, 3,468 fragments (Briggs 2005: 122, 150). The occupancies

Government House, Sydney – the servants’ quarters The Conservatorium site in Sydney was the site of the Government House stables, which were constructed around 1817–21 (Casey 2005: 97). At this site, a large rubbish deposit was excavated (context 850), from which 111

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? of the Port Adelaide houses are therefore relatively contemporary with the pre-1890 phase at OKH. Lampard argued that the house ownership of both the McKays and the Farrows, and Johanna Farrow’s role as a Sunday-school teacher, would have placed them at the ‘upper end of the working-class spectrum’ (2009: 52–53).

house. He identified the different vessel forms and general fabric and decorative types from each of these sites, but did not assess them in terms of sets. However, based on the artefact assemblages, and mainly the ceramics, Brooks developed a status hierarchy for the workers’ dwellings on the estate, with the south-west stable gatehouse at the top, then the blacksmith’s cottage in the village, then the north-east cottage and ‘home farm’ cottage, and finally a labourers’ cottage in the village (Brooks 2007: 194–95).

Working-class rural households Dolly’s Creek, Victoria

‘Viewbank’, near Melbourne

Dolly’s Creek, near Ballarat in Victoria, was part of the socalled Moorobal diggings, and housed a mining community from the late 1850s to at least the 1870s, and so largely predated the occupancy of OKH. In the early 1990s, Susan Lawrence led the excavations of four canvas house sites at Dolly’s Creek – the ‘Clock House’, the ‘Fireplace House’, the ‘Garden House’ and the ‘Stone House’ – which, Lawrence argued (2000: 113–24), were likely to have been occupied intermittently. There was little structural evidence of these houses except for the remains of fireplaces, and stone foundations for the last house, which Lawrence thought could have been a store or a pub (2000: 123). Nearly 1,300 artefacts were excavated from these house sites, among which Lawrence identified a number of ceramic tablewares and teawares and other less clearly identifiable ceramics (2000: 127, 130–32, 185; see also Lawrence Cheney n.d.: 128–71). With the exception of two teapot fragments from the ‘Clock House’, the unidentifiable ceramic vessels are included in the count for tablewares here (see Appendix 9), as they are not explicitly identified as teawares, and some are described as fragments of hollowware and flatware (Lawrence 2000: 185).

The Viewbank homestead, some 15 km from the centre of Melbourne, was the ‘town residence’ of the family of Robert and Lucy Martin (Hayes 2011: 8, 35). This 12-roomed house on 195 acres was occupied by the Martin family from 1844 to 1874, and later tenanted until its demolition in the 1920s. According to Sarah Hayes, Robert Martin, a physician, was part of Melbourne’s ‘established middle class’ and became a successful and wealthy pastoralist (2011: 4–5). The homestead, associated residences and rubbish dump were excavated in the 1990s, with the rubbish dump providing the main material for Hayes’ study of the ceramics from this site (2007; 2011; 2014a). Hayes argued that the material in this rubbish dump indicated that it was used as a regular refuse disposal area during the Martin occupancy, and also for disposal at the time of the site’s abandonment. She discovered that over half the ceramics from the tip, from the period for the Martin occupancy, formed matching and complementary tableware and teaware sets (Hayes 2011: 36). Again, this would have been earlier than the occupancy of OKH. Bean’s Parsonage, Gippsland, Victoria

Middle-class semi-rural households

The Rev. Willoughby Bean was reportedly from an ‘established’ English family with military and church connections, who, in 1848, was sent to Gippsland by the bishop of Melbourne (Lawrence et al. 2009: 69). Census documents from 1853 indicate that he was living with his wife, three children, a relative, and probably a servant in Gippsland before being recalled in December 1859. The site identified as the Bean’s Parsonage, some 20 km from Port Albert (Lawrence et al. 2009: 67), had buildings on it from at least 1840 and the parsonage was described as a comfortable eight-roomed cottage in 1859 (Lawrence et al. 2009: 70). Excavations at this site in 2006 did not reveal any structures, but produced a ‘rich archaeological assemblage’ which included a total of 272 ceramic vessels datable to the period of the Bean occupancy (Lawrence et al. 2009: 71). While Lawrence, Brooks and Lennon did not analyse tablewares and teawares separately, it is possible to estimate the MNVs and the related sets from their tabulation of these ceramic remains according to fabric (Lawrence et al. 2009: 72, table 1 and 76, table 3). Lawrence et al. (2009: 72– 77) also compared the ceramic assemblages – the numbers of identifiable forms, variations in ware and decoration and percentages of porcelain – at this mid-nineteenth household with those of the relatively contemporary, short-lived and assumed lower status, servants’ households

The Lake Innes Estate, near Port Macquarie The Lake Innes Estate was the rural estate of Archibald Clunes, near Port Macquarie, northern NSW, established in 1830 and all but abandoned by 1850 (Connah 2007: 2–5). Archibald Innes was a retired British army officer who had come to Australia in 1822 and was a member of the Australian political elite. Connah reported ‘a constant stream of guests and visitors’ to the Lake Innes ‘mansion’ (Connah 2007: 9). Excavations were carried out at the sites of the main house and other residences of various workers on the estate from 1993–2001 (Connah 2007). The ceramics excavated from the many residences were studied by Alasdair Brooks (2007). Brooks argued that, while the bulk of the ceramic remains from the main house, including those from the privies and entrance hall, date after Archibald Innes’ occupancy, the sites associated with servants’ quarters and workers’ residences are more closely related to the Innes’ occupancy of the estate (Brooks 2007: 194), and so predate that of OKH. Brooks analysed the ceramic assemblages at each of these sites – the southwest stable gatehouse, the blacksmith’s hut, the cottage north-east of the stables, the ‘home farm’ cottage and the labourers’ village hut – as well as two locations in the main 112

Comparing Australian Households for Social Status and Social Aspirations through their Ceramic Sets on the Lake Innes Estate to demonstrate the usefulness of such analyses for assessing socio-economic status.

post-1890 OKH vessels and consider assemblages from status group sites on the Lake Innes Estate, most of these house sites have broadly analysable ranges of MNVs for potentially meaningful results concerning relative social status. That is, with the exception of Dolly’s Creek and the lowest social groups on the Lake Innes Estate, which have smaller MNVs, the recorded MNVs for each site or group of sites range between 36 and 226 for tablewares and 23 and 138 for teawares.

In summary, as noted in the introduction, none of the data from these sites constitutes an ideal comparison for that from OKH. Also, some of these sites are earlier, and others include the pre-1890 period of occupancy of OKH but were occupied over a much longer period. Other further sites could potentially be useful for such comparative analyses, but unfortunately the relevant data have not been provided or analysed in a comparable fashion. For example, at the early twentieth-century Henry’s Mill in south-west Victoria, Peter Davies argued (2006: 105) that some 29 of 165 vessels (mainly plates, cups and saucers) belonged to ‘exact matching sets’, but does not identify the types and numbers of sets or indicate how they have been defined. Similarly, Prossor et al. (2012) identified a number of matching teaware and tableware sets among the ceramic tableware vessels recorded at 28 Wellington Street, Port Albert, Victoria, but data they have provided are not easily comparable with those at OKH, and are also seemingly inconsistently quantified.29 Notwithstanding, their conclusions that this site had at least eight cup-and-saucer pairs, seven breakfast sets and only one dinner service are perhaps noteworthy (Prossor et al. 2012: 819). Prossor et al. likewise note (2012: 822) that direct comparisons between Australian sites are difficult because such analyses have not been a standard part of ceramic studies.30

Tablewares As concluded in chapter five, there were at least six main tableware sets, and conceivably two further sets, that predated 1890 at OKH, and probably only six tableware sets during the much longer period that post-dated 1890. Among 4,760 sherds from the five working-class households at The Rocks, ranging in date from 1833–1931 but mainly from nineteenth-century contexts, most would seem to have been tablewares (Crook 2000: 23, table 2). Among these tablewares, Crook counted 13 ‘mismatching’ sets. The most common patterns were Two Temples and Willow. The house at 1 Carahers Lane, with eight sets, reportedly also had tablewares and teawares that matched each other (Crook 2000: 23). While we do not know the MNVs, the number of sherds recorded across these five houses is nearly two and half times the total number of tableware and teaware sherds at OKH, five times the number of tableware sherds, and more than 30 times the number of pre-1890 tablewares sherds. However, the number of pre1890 tableware sets at OKH is some 46–61 per cent of the number of tableware sets from across these five Rocks houses, while all the tableware sets at OKH, pre- and post1890, make up 76 per cent to over 100 per cent of the total from these Rocks houses. Thus, the ratios of sets to sherds recorded among the OKH tablewares (1:19–1:25.5 for the pre-1890 phase and 1:135 for the post-1890 phase; see Table 8.1) are both considerably lower than those across these Rocks households (1:366), particularly for the pre1890 phase. It is notable that the OKH set-to-sherd ratio is also relatively low when the limited number of post-1890 sets identified at OKH are considered. While Crook does not give the ranges of vessel forms for the tablewares from these houses, those at other comparable Rocks houses were later analysed, and demonstrated a relatively wide range of types of serving dishes and sizes of plates (Crook et al. 2005: 146, table 37 and 150, table 38) but apparently no other forms of tableware. Also, ratios of serving dishes to plates across several houses in The Rocks range from 1:1.8 to 1:9 (Crook et al. 2005: 150, table 38), while at OKH this ratio is 1:1.6 (see Appendix 2a). This generally lower ratio at OKH suggests the pre-1890 occupants at OKH had more complex dinner table settings than these predominantly late nineteenth-century Rocks households, although not substantially so in all cases.

Comparative analyses The table (Appendix 9) shows the numbers of sherds, vessels and sets among the tablewares and teawares recorded at OKH and those identifiable at these other sites. The two chronological phases identified for OKH have been separated. Sherd and vessel counts include only those that can be attributed, or probably attributed, to these two phases at OKH. At each site, the most common types of transfer-printed patterns for the earthenwares and other common fabric types are also included in this table. The first point to reiterate is that other sites with recorded ceramic sets were predominantly occupied during the mid- to late nineteenth century. Therefore, it is not valid to use these sites for comparative analyses of the OKH post1890 tablewares and teawares, so the following discussion focuses on the pre-1890 ceramics from OKH, although, again, this comparison is not ideal. The second point to note is that while there are considerably more sherds recorded for The Rocks than across the two OKH phases, we do not have access to the MNVs for these particular ceramics at the former site, or to the sherd counts for the individual house sites. Nevertheless, if we exclude the 29 E.g. the 123 ceramic tableware vessels reported (Prossor et al. 2012: 818) do not concur with the quantities in table 1 (Prossor et al. 2012: 819). It is also difficult to see how the number of sets has been calculated from the data in table 3 (Prossor et al. 2012: 819–20). 30 For example, useful comparative data for the excavations of largely working-class urban houses at the Little Lon site in Melbourne have not been accessible for this study (although see Murray and Mayne 2002).

Lydon (1995: 83) suggested that the finewares recorded from Mrs Ann Lewis’ boarding house indicated individual rather than communal dining. While she did not identify 113

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Table 8.1. Ratios of numbers of tableware sets to sherds and vessel counts, and percentages of large plates in the tableware assemblages (unless indicated otherwise) at each site. Site

Sub-site

Sets:sherds

Sets: MNVs

Large plates (from 9 in.) as approx. % of tableware assemblage

OKH pre-1890

1:19–1:25.5

1:10.9–1:14.5

18–38%; 12.6%–26% (of all table and teawares)

OKH post-1890

1:135

1:34

41–51%; 22–28% (of all tablewares and teawares)

The Rocks, Sydney

1:366

39.13% (of ceramic assemblage of Mrs Lewis’s residence) poss. c.1:20?

45–62.4%

Quebec St

1:37

40.9–43.6%

McKay cottage

1:36

30.5–37.5%

Farrow cottage

1:55

28.3–34.7%

main house

1:7

up to 66.7% (all plates)

house servants and blacksmith

1:13.5

up to 44.4% (all plates)

farm workers

1:8.5

up to 52.9% (all plates)

Viewbank, Victoria

1:11

up to 44%

Bean’s Parsonage, Victoria

1:17.2

c.70%

Govt. House, Sydney Port Adelaide, Adelaide

Lake Innes Estate, Port Macquarie, NSW

sets of tablewares, or provide MNVs for these tablewares, she noted (1995: 83–84) that dinner plates were most prominent in the ceramic assemblage (39.13 per cent), mainly blue transfer (especially Rhine pattern), and that this assemblage also included a lid from a soup tureen. Although Lydon’s description does not give the full picture, if we assess the percentages of dinner, entrée and supper plates (i.e. 9–10½-inch plates – for identifications, see Table 4.2) that made up the OKH pre-1890 tableware assemblage alone (i.e. excluding teawares etc.) these make up some 18– 38 per cent of this particular tableware assemblage, as some plates are of unknown size. If we include the OKH pre-1890 teawares, as is presumably the case for Lydon’s percentage at Mrs Lewis’ boarding house, and her figure may also include other ceramics, then the OKH plates make up less than 26 per cent of this assemblage. At OKH there were also numerous smaller plates and evidence for some 20 serving dishes or tureens that probably date prior to 1890. Thus, the table settings at OKH during the early years seem to be more complex than those of Mrs Ann Lewis, whether or not these were for her family or her guests.

and dessert sets in the 1908 inventory for Government House, and noted that many of the ceramic remains uncovered during excavation were fairly utilitarian, and possibly related to servants’ foodways. She argued that the better-quality tablewares were unlikely to have been thrown away (Casey 2005: 109). Because of the different approach to the analyses of these tablewares, and lack of identified sets, it is difficult to compare them to the OKH tablewares. The MIC and the variety of decorative types suggest the potential for a greater number of sets than the pre-OKH sets, even if used by servants. However, while the numbers of tableware vessels of each pattern have not been identified by Casey, in Table 8.1 a ratio of 1:20 comprises a very rough estimate of sets to MIC, based on the different decorative types. This ratio suggests proportionately fewer sets to vessel counts at the Government House site compared with those at OKH. The assemblage is likely to represent a much larger group of people over a longer period, though, perhaps with a variety of statuses within the household of Government House. The possibly high ratio of sets to MIC, if reliable, would suggest a lower social status than at OKH. Also, the percentage of larger plates in the Government House assemblage is higher than at OKH prior to 1890, and possibly after 1890. This seems in keeping with the former being the assemblage of the servants of this household, with a probably more limited range of settings than that at OKH, at least during the earlier period.

Among the sampled ceramic assemblage from context 850 at the Government House site in Sydney, Mary Casey identified some 226 tableware and serving vessels (Casey 2005: 102–103). She noted that these were dominated by dinner plates (102, or 45 per cent), with a further 39 bread-and-butter and entrée plates (totalling 62 per cent). She also noted (2005: 104) that these plates included 12 types of decoration and at least 37 patterns. While these were not identified as specific sets, they included banded white ware, Willow, Asiatic Pheasant, Albion and Cable, as were recorded at OKH. Casey also identified (2005: 110) a number of different-quality dinner, breakfast, tea and coffee

From a total MVC of 401 tableware and tableware/serving vessels (Briggs 2005: 93, table 5.3, 124, table 6.3, 151, table 7.3),31 and using a set definition of at least three vessel forms This MVC includes table and serving forms but not jugs, to concur with the OKH vessel counts.

31

114

Comparing Australian Households for Social Status and Social Aspirations through their Ceramic Sets noted (2000: 131–32) that Willow and Asiatic Pheasant were the most common among the transfer-printed patterns, but that there were 13 other patterns and only two dishes, at most, of the same pattern in any house. She therefore concluded that there was no attempt at matching sets in any of these houses, or even similar colours. She noted that the main colours were ‘blue, mulberry, sepia and green’, but that there were no black or red printed vessels. These observations suggest that the table settings in these miners’ households were much simpler than those at OKH. The limited number of sherds and MNVs at each site also probably indicates limited use of ceramic tablewares by this mining community.

in the same pattern, Briggs identified a total of nine tableware sets in the assemblages across her case studies in Port Adelaide, and, respectively, three, two and four sets at each site, with some overlap of tableware sets and teaware sets (see Briggs 2005: 100–102, table 5.7, 130–31, table 6.7, 165, table 7.7). In relative terms, while there are 50 per cent more sets across these three sites than for the pre-1890 period at OKH, there are more than four times as many MVCs (see Appendix 9). If we consider each of the three house sites at Port Adelaide separately, there are notably fewer sets for each of the Port Adelaide sites, and considerably higher set-to-MNV ratios (1:36–1:56) compared with the pre1890 period at OKH (c.1:11–1:14.5; Table 8.1). This could be related to the number of occupants, needing larger sets, rather than necessarily to dining standards, although this seems unlikely given these are all rather small cottages. Briggs noted (2005: 92–93, and table 5.3) that the main tablewares at the Quebec Street site were of the sizes of large dinner plates, entrée plates and supper plates (c.40.9–43.6 per cent), with a comparatively limited number of smaller plates (i.e. less than 9 inches), relatively few bowls, serving dishes and platters, and apparently no soup plates, which mainly occurred at OKH after 1890, although possibly also before (see Table 5.28). Similar forms to those from the Quebec Street site, but with slightly lower percentages of large plates (30.5–37.5 per cent), were recorded for the McKay cottage (Briggs 2005: 123–24, and table 6.3). Thus, the Quebec Street site certainly, and the MacKay household probably, had a more limited range of table settings than the pre-1890 period at OKH, despite the numbers of MNVs and despite continuing until 1900. The Farrow cottage had comparable percentages of larger dinner plates to the McKay cottage (28.3–34.7 per cent), but more evidence for smaller plates, perhaps side plates, and also seemingly more bowls than the first two sites (Briggs 2005: 150–51, and table 7.3), suggesting more complex table settings in this household (Briggs 2005: 152), and conceivably also than at OKH. This would seem to support Lampard’s conclusion that the Farrow household was the most aspirationally middle-class among the Port Adelaide sites (2009: 61). However, when considering that the MNV for the Farrow cottage is about two and half times that for the OKH tablewares, this cottage still had relatively fewer serving dishes and platters, with the lower percentage of dinner plates resulting from a high percentage of twifflers or smaller plates (see Briggs 2005, table 7.3). The most common patterns for these tablewares across these Port Adelaide households were Willow, Rhine, Albion and Asiatic Pheasant (Briggs 2005: 98, table 5.6, 128, table 6.6, 161, 164), as at OKH, although the McKays also had a Priory-patterned set of both tablewares and teawares. Thus, while the patterns for the tablewares at these Port Adelaide sites are similar to those at OKH, these households each had notably fewer sets and generally a seemingly more limited range of vessel types over a longer period. Also, there is much less evidence at OKH for the same patterns being used for both teawares and tablewares.

For the Lake Innes Estate, the MNVs in Appendix 9 are taken from the totals of the vessel types tabulated by Brooks (2007: tables 8.1–7). However, the likely numbers of sets for each residence are rough estimates only, derived from the vessel forms and numbers listed for the different general fabrics and colours of the transfer-printed pattern decorative colours in Brooks’ tables, rather than the actual pattern. The evidence for tableware remains from the different residences suggests a total of some 11 tableware sets from an MNV of 107. There is a notably limited MNV across these residences, compared with other, mainly urban, sites analysed above, and also a relatively higher number of sets than were recorded at OKH. If we group the residences according to Brooks’ hierarchy, outlined above – the main house; the south-west gatehouse, the blacksmith’s cottage and the cottage to north-east of stables; and finally the ‘home farm’ cottage and the labourers’ hut – we can perhaps assess to what extent this higher number of sets is related to the main residence. For the first social group, we have at least five tableware sets from an MNV of 36, which gives a lower ratio of sets to MNV compared with those from the pre-1890 period at OKH (i.e. c.1:7 compared with 1:10–1:14.5). However, as remarked by Brooks, it is not clear with what sort of occupancy these ceramics would have been associated. For the second group, with 54 MNV and at least four sets, the set to MNV ratio is c.1:13.5, and for the third group, with 17 MNVs and possibly two sets, the ratio is possibly 1:8.5, which, if correct, seems rather low, in relation to the other sites compared here. However, the very small numbers, and lack of clear identification of sets, is likely to be skewing these results. The percentages of plates (no sizes provided) are also not likely to be very reliable, particularly for the first group. The second group and third group have higher percentages, but with notably more bowls than plates in the labourers’ hut (Brooks 2007: 187, table 8.3), which could conceivably indicate a greater consumption of broth here, and so an even lower standard of dining than at these other sites. All the patterns identified for the Lake Innes Estate sites seem to be relatively common nineteenth-century patterns (see Brooks 2005: fig. 4.55; Crook 2008: 237). In her study of the Viewbank homestead, Sarah Hayes identified 11 matching sets and three complementary ones (2014: 30–31, tables 5.7 and 5.8) among an MNI of 157 tableware vessels (2014: 26, tables 5.3 and 5.4). This

For the Dolly’s Creek diggings, it is difficult to make comparisons with OKH, given the lack of comparable analyses of the ceramics from the houses there. Lawrence 115

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? gives a ratio of sets to MNI of c.1:11, which is within the realm of that at OKH for the pre-1890 sets. Comparing the range and numbers of vessel forms at Viewbank with those at OKH is not totally straightforward, however. While Viewbank probably had twice as many tableware vessels as OKH, across the matching and complementary sets at Viewbank, the percentages of large plates are on the high side, at c.44 per cent (Hayes 2014: 30–31, tables 5.7 and 5.8). As well as having proportionately more plates, Viewbank seems to have had fewer serving dishes and proportionately fewer platters than OKH. While some of the common nineteenth-century patterns were present among the Viewbank sets (e.g. Asiatic Pheasant, Rhine, and Willow), other more elaborate, and possibly higher value, patterns were better represented at this homestead. These included the Queen’s and Summer Flower patterns, which Hayes argued would have been the Martin family’s more formal and best sets, respectively (2014a: 29, 66). The latter was a seemingly quite large set, which Hayes argued may have been used for Sunday dinners and for guests. Thus, despite the relatively comparable numbers and forms of sets, the presence of these rarer sets, and of bone china tablewares at the Viewbank homestead (Hayes 2014a: 26), suggest a higher quality of dining than is represented by the tablewares reported at OKH, and at the other sites discussed above.

However, the table setting in Bean’s Parsonage would seem more limited. Old-fashioned patterns and fabrics were also observed at OKH (see chapter five), and on the Lake Innes Estate (see Brooks 2007: 191), and, rather than being purchased as such, may have been brought by the occupants to these three sites as previously owned, valuable inherited items (see Gray 2013: 29). In contrast, Prossor et al. (2012: 815) observed that ‘virtually nothing was demonstrably old-fashioned’, ‘second-hand’ or ‘hand-me-down’ in the Thomas house at 28 Wellington Street, Port Albert. Given that only one dinner set was apparently identified from this household among 46 vessels, this may have been more a result of easier access to such goods in this harbour town than a sign of gentility and its association with inheritance, as argued by Prossor et al. In summary, the ratios of tableware sets to MNVs (Table 8.1) indicate that the closest parallels to pre-1890 OKH, quantitatively, are the Martin household (at Viewbank), then the house servants and blacksmith on the Lake Innes Estate, then the Bean household, and then possibly the servants’ quarters at Government House, with the main house on the Lake Innes Estate having the lowest ratio and therefore the expected higher status. The potentially lower ratio for the farm workers’ households on the Lake Innes Estate might seem to contradict the conclusions of Lawrence et al. about the relative social status of the Bean household to the house servants on the Lake Innes Estate, based on variation in vessel form and range of patterns (2009: 75). As noted above, though, the limited numbers of finds from the Lake Innes Estate sites, compared with the other sites analysed here, makes the figures for these households rather unreliable. Considerably higher ratios are found among the working-class households at Port Adelaide, and probably also among those in The Rocks. At the bottom of the social scale were probably the inhabitants of Dolly’s Creek, with no identifiable sets among an MNV of 35–36, and so the least interest in matching table settings. Thus, these set-to-MNV ratios put the occupants of OKH at a higher social level than the occupants of the urban working-class sites, any mining households at Dolly’s Creek, and seemingly also the semirural, more middle-class, Bean’s Parsonage household, with the Martin household at Viewbank and the house servants at Lake Innes Estate being the most comparable. Comparison of the range of vessel forms indicates that the OKH dinner settings were more complex than those of the Port Adelaide households, at least some of the Rocks households, and also those of the Bean household. They are again more comparable to the Martin household at Viewbank. Also, the types of sets used at OKH, certainly prior to 1890, are common types similar to those identified at these other sites. At Viewbank there were seemingly less common types found, though.

Among the 272 MNVs from the Rev. Willoughby Bean’s parsonage, attributed to the Bean household, Lawrence et al. reported 11 basic ware types and 15 different forms, which included cups and saucers (2009: 71). Eighty-six of the MNVs, including a salt cellar, can be identified as tableware vessels (Lawrence et al. 2009: 72, table 1). From the different patterns and vessel forms tabulated by Lawrence et al. (2009: 76, table 3) there would appear to be five tableware sets. This gives a ratio of sets to MNV in the Bean household of 1:17.2, which is a rather higher ratio than for the OKH pre-1890 sets, suggesting that the occupants of the OKH were using a wider range of tableware sets than the Bean household during a slightly earlier period, despite a similar number of MNVs. The majority of the vessels in the sets used by the Bean household would seem to have been plates (c.70 per cent – see Lawrence et al. 2009: 72, table 1), with limited evidence for platters or serving dishes, although a surprising number of ‘lids’. Lawrence et al. also observed that Willow, Rhine and Eton College were among the most common patterns in the Bean household, and suggested (2009: 71) that the Beans may also have been purchasing tablewares, and teawares, with old-fashioned patterns. Thus, the Bean household had both a more limited range of dinner services and more limited table settings than the OKH household. Lawrence et al. also compared the ceramic assemblages from the Bean household with those found at the sites of five servants’ households on the Lake Innes Estate, Port Macquarie, NSW. Each of these latter households had noticeably smaller assemblages than that of Bean’s household, but Lawrence et al. noted (2009: 71) that the house servants and the coachman seemed to have a similar array of tablewares. This is borne out to some extent by the comparable ratios here (Table 8.1).

The greater similarity of the OKH assemblage to that at Viewbank, in both relative quantity of sets and potentially of the ranges of vessels within a set, suggests that the occupants at OKH at least aspired to dining settings similar to those of the Martin household. However, the actual 116

Comparing Australian Households for Social Status and Social Aspirations through their Ceramic Sets Table 8.2. Ratios of numbers of teaware sets to sherd and vessel counts, at each site.

types of sets were more comparable to those of the Bean household, at least prior to 1890, when the occupants of OKH acquired the rarer Cuba set. This might indicate that, in the earlier years of the homestead, as has been argued by E. Gwynne Hughes (pers. comm., fax, 14 Oct. 1998), expenditure was focused on resources for the pastoral industry, and not domestic resources. However, this did not seem to impact on social aspiration. Social status was probably being expressed at OKH through table settings acquired before arrival at OKH, and aspirations by adding piecemeal to these sets. This seems to have changed c.1890, though, and then changed again in the twentieth century.

Site

Sub-site

OKH pre-1890 OKH post-1890 The Rocks

Set:sherds

Set:MNVs

1:5.1

1:4

1:135.2–1:189.4 1:54–1:75.6 aggregate of 10 houses

1:13.5

1 Carahers Lane

1:24

Quebec St

1:5.7

McKay cottage

1:6.4

Port Adelaide

The percentages of large plates within the table settings from these other sites tend to show a slightly different picture from these other types of analyses, however, with some of the lower percentages, and therefore seemingly more diverse table settings, in the working-class households at Port Adelaide. This may not be a viable form of analysis, however, as it does not allow for people making greater use of other vessel forms as a matter of necessity, such as bowls in the labourers’ hut on the Lake Innes Estate, or working-class houses using small plates as dinner plates. It is perhaps notable that most of the sites analysed here have percentages of dinner plates in the realm of 30–40 per cent, which might indicate that they all aspired to a similar table setting, whether or not the vessels actually matched. A notable exception here is Bean’s Parsonage. The relatively low percentage of dinner plates among the tablewares at OKH could relate to the recording strategy or, alternatively, indicate the lack of opportunity for larger numbers of people gathering to dine at this homestead prior to 1890.

Farrow cottage

1:4.5 1:19.5

c.1:6

Dolly’s Creek

Clock House

Lake Innes Estate

main house

1:6.6

house servants and blacksmith

1:7.4

farm workers

1:4

Viewbank

1:10.8

Bean’s Parsonage

1:9

number of sets, it represents an overall ratio of sets to vessels of 1:13.5 across these houses (Table 8.2), and a ratio of 1:24 for 1 Carahers Lane. These ratios are considerably higher than that for the pre-1890 period at OKH, even if we remove three of the OKH sets consisting of either cups or saucers only – one of each of the blue and red transferprinted sets and the blue sprigged bone china set (see Tables 6.1, 6.6 and 6.7) – which would make the ratio at OKH 1:5.7 rather than 1:4. While many of the teawares from the Rocks households are in common patterns (e.g. Rhine, Chantilly and Two Temples), some, such as Florence and Lace, seem to be rather fine and less common, as do hand-painted porcelain teawares (see Crook et al. 2005: 153–54). The latter also occurred at OKH (see Table 6.26).

Teawares As concluded in chapter six, some 10 matching tea sets were identified that could be dated to the pre-1890 phase at OKH, but only five to seven to the later, longer, phase when the nineteenth-century definition of a tea set seemed to break down. The lack of comparable analyses across these other sites that hindered more systematic comparative assessment of tableware sets is even more apparent for comparative analyses of teaware sets.

As noted above for the tablewares, Lydon (1995: 83) suggested that the finewares recorded from Mrs Lewis’ boarding house likewise indicated individual household tea-drinking, as opposed to more institutional teadrinking. In particular, she observed that there were a number of sets of larger breakfast cups and saucers, of similar dimensions, of simple form and of thick robust china, but also observed that these did not ‘form a service’, as might be expected in a boarding house. However, Lydon does not specify numbers of sets, so it is not possible to use her study to compare these with the OKH sets. That said, her description of these vessels as being of ‘simple form and of thick, robust china’ (Lydon 1995: 83) implies that they were likely to have been of generally lower quality than those at OKH.

No teaware sets were included in Crook’s initial analyses of the above five houses in The Rocks, although Crook did refer to the house at 1 Carahers Lane as having matching tablewares and teawares (Crook 2000: 23). Also, considerable numbers of teawares were later noted from this house and nine further houses in The Rocks (Crook et al. 2005: 151–56). Among 387 teaware vessels across these 10 households, Crook et al. (2005: 152) identified 16 ‘varieties of “matching sets”’ – being eight sets of individual teacups and saucers, four multiple cup-and-saucer sets and other sets of multiple cups or saucers. There would appear to be a total of 28 teacup and saucer sets across these houses (Crook et al. 2005: 155, table 41).32 If this is the correct 32 The counts in Crook et al. 2005: tables 40 and 41 do not correspond (i.e. 371 vessels in table 40 and 387 in table 41), and it is not clear what

comprises a set in table 41.

117

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? (Briggs 2005: table 5.3) – respectively c.60 per cent and c.40 per cent of these teaware vessels – there were one and a half times as many cups as saucers. The McKay cottage also had nearly one and a half times as many cups as saucers. This might indicate, in contradiction to Briggs’ argument, that cups were indeed likely to have been used alone in the Port Adelaide households, although cups do tend to break and be discarded more frequently than saucers. That said, at OKH the numbers are more even, for the pre-1890 period and across the assemblage, with 19 cups and 20 saucers for the pre-1890 period, respectively 47.5 per cent and 52 per cent, and 215 cups and 218 saucers for all teawares at OKH (see Appendices 3a–b). Also, two of the four main sets identified by Briggs (2005: 101, table 5.7) have only cups or only saucers, unlike the Rocks sets identified by Crook et al. (2005: 155, table 41). The main types of decoration for the teawares at all the Port Adelaide sites were purple Chelsea Sprig, gilt, red or blue edgeware and plain (Briggs 2005: 100, 130, 164). The McKay cottage had two teaware sets that were seemingly each part of a tableware and teaware set – Priory and Rhine (Briggs 2005: 130). The Farrow cottage had a notable dominance of Chelsea Sprig, and at least two other sets (Rhine and Willow) included tablewares and teawares (Brigg 2005: 165–66). As noted above, this ‘crossover’ was noted only for Willow at OKH. The relative similarity in these ratios to the OKH pre-1890 ratio, compared to the tablewares, suggests more similar teaware settings in these Port Adelaide households to those at OKH during the pre-1890 period, if slightly less elaborate ones.

Again, because information for the actual sets is not readily accessible, it is difficult to make comparisons with the analyses of the teawares from the rubbish deposit (context 850) at the Government House site in Sydney. Casey identified the remains of some 121 teawares, being cups, saucers, a sugar bowl and a teapot from the sampled collection, and noted 23 different wares and 41 different patterns (Casey 2005: 102–104), but did not estimate sets for these vessels. However, she argued that for many patterns only one example was found, and that gilded white teawares were more common than transfer-printed ones. She also noted that 58 per cent of these teawares were undecorated earthenware, and that they were heavy, thick breakfast cups rather than teacups. She therefore suggested that these were used by servants and possibly staff, and that the fine gilded bone china teawares were ‘more typical of those used by Governor’s family and visitors’. She argued that ‘[g]enerally these teawares represent a lower frequency when compared to other urban sites’ (Casey 2005: 103), suggesting that tea-drinking was less important here than at other sites, given the MIC and variety among them. From the dating for the Government House site, this assemblage conceivably shows a pattern of change in the concept of tea sets similar to that at OKH. That is, they both demonstrate a change from a great range of patterns of transfer-printed wares, but relatively limited numbers of each, to large quantities of gilded and perhaps also plain teawares. It is also noteworthy that breakfast cups seem to predominate in the Kinchega Estate bookkeeping records (see chapter seven, p. 100). In general, there is an impression that tea-drinking practices at Government House in Sydney, such as are represented in this assemblage, are not so dissimilar from those at OKH. However, the nature of analyses of the Government House material means such a conclusion needs to be treated with caution.

There is limited information on the teawares from the Dolly’s Creek households. There also seems to be a mismatch for the ‘Garden House’ between the numbers of teaware vessels and the numbers of sherds from cups and saucers (cf. Lawrence 2000: 130, 185). This may be because the ‘hollowware’ fragment from this site was later identified as a cup or mug. While Lawrence does not clearly identify what types of teawares were found at Dolly’s Creek, she refers to Willow pattern teacups (2000: 132). Her comment above, about an evident lack of attempts to match tableware sets at this site, may also apply to the teawares. The Clock House was the only site with apparent tea sets, having four matching cup and saucer pairs (Lawrence Cheney n.d.: 140). It also notable that the Clock House, with over 83 per cent of the teawares recorded at this site, had more than twice as many cups as saucers (i.e. 16 cups and seven saucers – Lawrence 2000: 130). This would concur with Briggs’ concept of the less ‘respectable’ practice of teadrinking without saucers.

Across the households at Port Adelaide, Briggs identified 35 cup-and-saucer-only teaware sets among 240 MNVs (Briggs 2005: 93, table 5.3, 124, table 6.3, 151, table 57.3), which she referred to as ‘partial sets’ (2005: 102, table 5.8, 132, table 6.8, 167, table 7.8), but which fit our definition of teaware sets at OKH. Altogether, though, Briggs recorded 48 teaware sets among these households, as some sets included other vessels (i.e. tablewares) as well as cups and saucers. If we break these 48 sets down into the three different sites, this gives a ratio of sets to MNVs of 1:5.7 for the Quebec Street site, 1:6.4 for the McKay cottage, and 1:4.5 for the Farrow cottage. These ratios are similar to, or slightly higher than, the ratio for the pre-1890s of sets to MNVs at OKH. If there were some 17 tea sets, including the breakfast sets, among an MNV of 69, then 28 Wellington Street, Port Albert would also be similar, with a ratio of c.1:4 (see Prossor et al. 2012: 819, table 2). For the Quebec Street site, Briggs used the limited amount of porcelain and the similar proportions of teacups and saucers of the earthenware assemblage (2005: 93) to argue that cups were not used without saucers here, which would have been a sign of lack of respectability. However, with twenty-eight teacups and 19 saucers recorded at the Quebec Street site

Unfortunately, there is limited detail on the teawares and teaware sets from the households on the Lake Innes Estate. The ratios of possibly identified sets to MNVs for all three categories of households on the Lake Innes Estate are relatively comparable to those from the Port Adelaide sites, and are thus in a similar realm to those from the pre-1890 period at OKH. It is not clear whether the transfer-printed patterns described by Brooks (2007: 185–93) were those of tablewares or teawares, though. There is a predominance 118

Comparing Australian Households for Social Status and Social Aspirations through their Ceramic Sets of blue transfer-printed teawares, but also green transferprinted and banded earthenware teawares, as well as sprigged and gilded bone china, in the main house (Brooks 2007: table 8.1), with similar coloured earthenwares in the south-west and blacksmith’s cottages, but seemingly different coloured earthenwares in the north-east cottage and farm workers’ residences. Again, the numbers of teawares and their descriptions are too limited to make meaningful comparisons.

ubiquitous’ across the 25 sites they analysed. However, they did not specify the social and locational contexts of these sites (i.e. urban, rural working class etc.). A likely explanation for greater presence, and therefore use, of teaware sets across much of the social spectrum in more settled areas might be the different types of social interactions in different contexts. ‘Dropping in’ for tea would have been a much simpler activity in an urban environment or in mining settlements, as indicated by Elizabeth Ramsay-Laye’s experiences (see chapter two, p. 18), than in more rural areas. It would also have been a simpler and less costly way to entertain and to demonstrate gentility, or respectability, than holding dinner parties. It is conceivable that, despite Briggs’ argument, some of these more working-class urban households, and those at Dolly’s Creek, may have only offered their guests a cup, without a saucer. Perhaps the Martins did not provide all their staff with saucers either? Dinner parties, including with guests staying overnight, were likely to have been more the norm in more rural contexts (see Cambridge 1903: 33, 65–67, 102, 134, passim). Suzanne Spencer-Wood and Scott Heberling made a similar observation for the Green planter household in Windsor, Vermont in the US (1987: 71). However, this would not explain the relatively low ratio of teaware sets at OKH. A possible explanation might be the recording methods used (see chapter four). Alternatively, new arrivals to OKH, aspiring to respectable tea-drinking events, may have brought a number of tea sets with them to the outback, only to discover the difficulty of organising and implementing such tea-drinking occasions. The likely dates of some of the transfer-printed teaware sets at OKH (see chapter six) might support this argument. So, when these occasions did take place, the OKH occupants were able to display relatively genteel tea-settings, albeit using relatively old-fashioned, respectable, teawares. It is noteworthy that after c.1890, at OKH and elsewhere, such as at the Government House site, the concept of analysing tea sets in this manner, both quantitatively and qualitatively, is no longer viable. After this date, it would appear that large, amorphous tea sets such as ‘white and gold’ tea sets dominated the record and were likely to have been used across a wider range of social occasions and for a wider range of guests.

Among 130 teaware vessels recorded from Viewbank, Hayes  identified nine matching tea sets, with five complementary ones, two of which provide complementary vessels for the matching sets (2014: 32, 33, tables 5.12–13). Thus, these essentially 12 sets constitute a set-to-MNV ratio of 1:10.8, which is higher than all except 1 Carahers Lane in The Rocks. This seems rather incongruous given the likely social status of the occupants of this house. Despite this ratio, though, the actual number of sets at Viewbank is comparable to that for the pre-1890 period at OKH, respectively 10 and 12, and is the highest numbers across this sample. As for the Farrow cottage, there seems to have been one large set – the Berlin Swirl – which was reportedly a common pattern (Hayes 2014a: 28; see also comment in chapter four, p. 34), and the same pattern as one of the tableware sets. However, the majority of the teawares at Viewbank were bone china, most were decorated, and many were gilded. So, while the numbers of sets would not seem to set the Martin family apart, the types of teaware sets would have. Again, somewhat incongruously, with 66 cups and 41 saucers, the Martin family had c.62 per cent cups and 38 per cent saucers, which is an even lower percentage of saucers than the Port Adelaide houses. Either this is not a reliable indication of social status, or these percentages could indicate the greater use of these cups only among the servants and farm workers at the Viewbank homestead. With an MNV of 54 teaware vessels (Lawrence et al. 2009: 71, table 1) and six identifiable teaware sets (Lawrence et al. 2009: 76, table 3), the Bean household had a set-to-MNV ratio of 1:9, which would make it more comparable to the Viewbank household, although the types of teawares are mainly common earthenware types. However, this ratio is, again, higher than that in many of the other lower-status households in urban and mixed mining/urban contexts, and again rather incongruous.

This discussion has focused on teacups and saucers, as most of these types of vessels have been identified as such in these studies, including at OKH. However, both Lydon (1995: 83) and Casey (2005: 103) mention the prominence of breakfast cups, at Mrs Lewis boarding house and at the Government House site respectively, and suggest that these were for lower-status tea-drinking. This is despite their evident higher prices, as noted in chapter seven. Also, the question of distinguishing coffee-drinking from teadrinking at these sites is not addressed here or in most of these comparative studies (see also Garver 2015). Lydon (1995: 84) mentions only the relative lack of evidence for tea- and coffee-drinking in The Rocks, while Casey refers to coffee sets in the 1908 Government House inventory, but not among the assemblage of what was likely to be rubbish from the servants’ quarters.

It is difficult to make rigorous comparisons between the teaware sets at these various sites, because of the different definitions of what constitutes a tea set and the different ways in which these data have been collated at each site. However, in general, these analyses indicate a lack of consistency between the relative ratios of tablewares and the relative ratios of teawares at each site. Indeed, some of the working-class urban households, and those in the Dolly’s Creek mining community, would seem to have proportionately more teaware sets than the more middleclass, semi-rural households. Prossor et al. noted (2012: 821) that ‘matching cup-and-saucer pairs were nearly 119

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Summary

which Briggs argued for the Port Adelaide households would seem to echo that at OKH in terms of tea-drinking, if perhaps less elaborately performed. The OKH occupants had a greater range of patterned sets, including patterns that do not seem to have been recorded at these other sites.

As noted at the outset of this chapter, none of these comparisons constitutes an exactly equivalent type of household to that of OKH, and neither do they have a similar date range, or precisely comparable data available. Nevertheless, these studies can shed some light on the kinds and levels of social interactions likely to have taken place at OKH, relative to these other households. As also noted at the outset of this chapter, the available documentary evidence, discussed in chapter seven, is best for assessing the social status and activities represented by the post-1890 tablewares and teawares at OKH, while the comparanda in this chapter, despite their diverse chronological range and their approaches to matching sets, are better suited for assessing the likely social status and activities represented by the tablewares and teawares that probably date prior to 1890.

The information available on the tablewares and teawares at Dolly’s Creek again makes it difficult to compare these households with OKH. With the possible exception of the Clock House, matching sets of either tablewares or teawares were not a social prerogative, or perhaps were not within the economic reach of these households, and tea may often have been taken without a saucer in these households. The largely middle-class, semi-rural households seem to have had table settings that were more comparable to those at OKH than those of these urban and mining workingclass households, despite the aspirations of respectability among the Port Adelaide houses (Lampard 2009). Again, the data from the earliest Lake Innes Estate are not detailed enough for close scrutiny, but appear to demonstrate relatively comparable ratios, at least, to those at OKH, for both tablewares and teawares, and also comparable decorative patterns. The data for the Viewbank household are more detailed and useful. While they demonstrate a similar ratio for the tableware sets, some of these are of a higher quality than those at OKH. And while Viewbank has a relatively high set-to-MNV ratio for the teawares, it is notable that this household had one very large set with both tablewares and teawares (Berlin Swirl), which included some 16 per cent of all the vessels ascribed to some 26 tableware and teaware sets (Hayes 2014a: tables 5.7 and 5.12). These observations for Viewbank seem to provide good comparative information for the social status and aspirations of the OKH inhabitants. While these two households had similar numbers of tableware sets, and similar ranges of vessel forms within these, the seemingly higher-quality Viewbank tableware sets suggest that the OKH inhabitants had aspirations for similar standards of gentility in their table settings, but did not have the same access to expensive sets, whether for economic reasons or for reasons of distance. The higher ratio of tea sets to MNVs at Viewbank would seem to result from comparatively larger tea sets being used by this household. Undoubtedly, the occupants at Viewbank would have had greater occasion for large tea-drinking gatherings than the pre-1890 occupants of OKH, and the quality of these tea sets suggests these were likely to have been higher-status gatherings.

For the Rocks houses, Crook (1999: 36) provided a social hierarchy on the basis of the sizes of the buildings and their rate values, with 128 Cumberland Street at the top of the social hierarchy, then 4 Cribbs Street, 4 Carahers Lane, 1 Carahers Lane and finally the small house at the rear of 95 Gloucester Street. In the above analyses, it has only been possible to assess the prevalence or otherwise of tableware sets across these five households, and also at Mrs Lewis’ boarding house, and ratios of teaware sets only at 1 Carahers Lane and across several households. On this basis, though, the assemblages and sets at OKH seem to show a much greater use of tableware sets and of teaware sets, and to demonstrate more complex dinner table settings and a greater range of tea settings. However, the tableware sets, in particular, from the Rocks households were of equally common types as the OKH ones and probably similarly ‘mismatched’. The data from what was likely to have been the servants’ quarters at Government House are even more difficult to assess, but suggests a range of common types of utilitarian tablewares and teawares, which may have been ill-matched transfer-printed wares, and which included many plain and gilded wares, possibly in the later phases of occupancy. It is likely that this household was considerably larger than any of the others in this study. Briggs’ data from the house sites at Port Adelaide make it easier to compare these assemblages and sets with those from OKH. These Port Adelaide households all had similar ratios of tableware sets to MNVs, which are also substantially higher than those at OKH and again of a seemingly more limited range of vessel forms than were recorded at OKH, and probably slightly higher percentages of large plates. This likewise implies a greater focus on a greater range of respectable table settings at OKH than among these Port Adelaide cottages, even if the same common patterns were being used, and perhaps smaller groups were invited to dinner. By 1890, with the rarer Cuba set, with soup plates, the occupants of OKH would seem to be demonstrating actual levels of ‘gentility’, at least in their table settings. For the teawares, though, there would seem to be less distinction. That is, the ‘respectability’ for

The tableware assemblage at Bean’s Parsonage has a comparable ratio of sets to MNV to that for OKH during the pre-1890 period, but with a seemingly more limited range of settings, including a much higher percentage of plates, suggesting a slightly lower social status. This is perhaps confirmed by the higher ratio of teaware sets to MNVs at Bean’s Parsonage. In terms of distance, access to markets and available purchasing opportunities for the OKH residents, outlined in chapters three and seven (pp. 25–27 120

Comparing Australian Households for Social Status and Social Aspirations through their Ceramic Sets and p. 96), it was undoubtedly much more difficult for OKH occupants to acquire out-of-the-ordinary tablewares than for the Bean household or other semi-rural households. This suggests that, despite differences in distance from major centres, the OKH occupants probably had more opportunities than the Bean household, or treated such opportunities with greater occasion, to entertain dinner guests, and conceivably also visitors for tea. Such visits may have involved fewer people, certainly prior to 1890, but would perhaps have involved more genteel standards of dinner and tea settings. Thus, the quantities and ranges of types of sets at OKH bear witness to social aspirations, and perhaps also social status, that were closer to those of the Viewbank household than to those of these other workingclass urban and mining sites, and even of the semi-rural middle-class Bean household.

the MNV ratios among these different households bears witness to this type of social interaction having a much wider reach across different groups in Australian society. Secondly, but relatedly, tea-drinking occasions could be more easily accommodated for all types of visitors than sitdown meals, with or without saucers, or even with saucers used to keep off the flies (see chapter three, p. 31)! From these analyses, it is apparent that the reportedly genteel dining and tea-drinking standards at Viewbank were being observed at OKH prior to 1890, as best as may have been possible given the remoteness and probable lack of guests, and fewer people to take tea with who might have appreciated matching tea sets. The OKH occupants’ use of rather old-fashioned and more common dinner and tea sets to maintain such social standards was very probably the result of physical, and social, isolation. This changed after 1890, however.

Concluding comments The above discussion has attempted to relate Hayes’ four key indicators, outlined in the introduction, to the tablewares and teawares from OKH, to assess the place of the occupants of this homestead in Australia’s nineteenthcentury social hierarchy. It has focused on quantitative and qualitative analyses of matching sets and variations of vessel forms and uses of patterns, and to a certain extent on fashion, as these are the best analysable variables available for such a study. The study has also attempted, as much as is feasible and without presupposition, to address the question of the different sizes, constitutions, longevity and dates of the households discussed. While the semi-rural contexts of the Lake Innes Estate’s servants’ households, Viewbank and the Bean household are seemingly more relevant to the OKH’s socio-geographical context, these are all earlier sites. However, they are also closer to urban centres, and therefore might be expected to have greater access to both dinner and tea services and to visitors than the OKH occupants.

A notable difference among these households was that, at OKH, the only matching tableware and teaware set was Willow, while matching tablewares and teawares seem to have been more common at these other sites. The significance of this is difficult to interpret, but could conceivably relate to quite different approaches between entertaining for dinner and for tea in such outback homesteads, or at least at this outback homestead. While this study has focused on the place of the OKH inhabitants in the Australian social setting, it is perhaps relevant to use a similar approach to assess their place in a wider British colonial social context. Noteworthy here are Cabak and Groover’s comments on the wealthy George Bush household at Bush Hill plantation in Georgia, occupied between 1807 and 1920. They noted (2006: 76) that this household ‘used complete dinner sets composed of different matching vessel types … [but a] lack of pattern duplication among the blue transfer-printed plates which comprised a large proportion of the printed sherds implies the residents probably used a hodge-podge of flatware that was decorated with different blue transfer-printed patterns’. This evidence is essentially anecdotal, but could perhaps suggest a greater concern in Australian colonial society for matching table settings than in the Americas. However, the precise dates for this ‘hodge-podge’ of settings it is not clear from Cabak and Groover’s report. Neither is it clear whether it was used by the owners or their servants. If the latter, it may have been similar to the Government House assemblage.

The above comparisons also indicate that there was a difference between the social significance of matching tableware sets and of matching teaware sets among these households. There would seem to be two, related, reasons for this. It would have been easier for less affluent households to display respectability, at least, through tea services rather than through dinner services. As argued by Knight (2011: 31), afternoon tea was ‘a significant social occasion’, but ‘not confined by financial restraints or determined by class’. Gray (2013: 24) has similarly argued that afternoon tea was not a realm in which women were necessarily ‘reliant on the social status of their husbands’. Also, it was not considered an expensive form of hospitality, and was accordingly espoused as ‘being ideal for the young [or aspiring] housekeeper who was unable to afford more “lavish” social entertainment’ (Knight 2011: 31). ‘[A]fternoon tea did not carry the same sense of obligation required with other social engagements, such as a sit-down meal’ (Knight 2011: 40). Table settings therefore provided a stronger signal of gentility than did tea settings. The relative similarity of the teaware sets to

As noted throughout this chapter, these analyses have tried to accommodate the various different ways in which tablewares and teawares have been characterised, collated and analysed at these different sites. No totally comparable data set exists. As a result, particularly given the ways in which sets have been counted, and especially for some of the Rocks households and the households on the Lake Innes Estate, these analyses are essentially impressionistic. Indeed, the sampling method that has been used at OKH may be the reason for the high numbers of sets at this site. However, the results of the analyses seem logical, 121

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? and therefore to have some reliability. More detailed analyses of actual remains from each comparative site, and presentation of these analyses, would be needed for more fully comprehensive analyses. These comparisons, therefore, serve to demonstrate that more conscientious

and detailed approaches to characterising and collating ceramic finewares, as the most prolific material from the sites discussed, can lead to greater use of inter-site analyses to better understand the social worlds that these material remains document.

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9 Who Would Have Come to Dinner and Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead: Opportunities for Social Interaction and Social Networking P. Allison Introduction

record travel by the homestead occupants, mention who some of the homestead visitors were, and also sometimes provide some indication of the social significance of such events. As argued by Owens and Jeffries for tenanted houses in nineteenth-century London (2016: 807), the occupants of OKH changed throughout the life of the homestead, so it is not possible to link specific tableware and teaware sets to specific occupants and specific guests. That said, the detailed information on the homestead occupants and the chronological information on these sets help to develop a better understanding of the changing nature of social interactions and associated social networking throughout the occupancy of this outback pastoral homestead, and also of the changing social values of these interactions.

In this chapter, analyses in the previous chapters are combined with documentary and oral information about the actual occupants of OKH and their visitors for a greater understanding of the kinds of people involved in the types of social interactions that took place at the homestead, how these interactions would have changed throughout the lifetime of the homestead, and what this can tell us about changing social behaviour in this context. Included in the discussion are assessments of social aspirations and concepts of ‘Britishness’ and Victorian respectability and gentility, as well as Australian hospitality among the occupants of OKH, the roles of women in these social practices and cultural associations at this homestead, and how these can inform us on social values and mores in this outback pastoral context, in relation to wider Australian, and possibly colonial, society more generally.

The occupants of the Old Kinchega Homestead As discussed in chapter one, the leaseholders for the Kinchega Pastoral Estate were Herbert Bristow Hughes and his sons. Essentially, though, the Hughes did not live on the property or in OKH. Rather, the residents of this homestead until 1915 were estate managers, with their families, gardeners, grooms, cooks, storekeepers and possibly station workers (Kearns 1970: 6). After 1915, the managers resided at Kars Station homestead, over 60 km to the west, and OKH was downgraded to accommodate the overseers’ households (see Appendix 9).

The mainly material-cultural analyses in the preceding chapters leave some fundamental questions still unanswered. What sorts of people would have used these tablewares and teawares, who would the occupants of OKH have had to dinner, who would have come to tea and how would they have been received? Some insights into who guests at OKH were likely to have been, how frequently the homestead may have received visitors, and the relative numbers who may have come on any one occasion, can be gained through the reports of pioneering women in such contexts discussed in chapter three. As noted there, before 1870 there was essentially no social life for pastoralist families in the west Darling region. Even in the first few decades of the twentieth century, visitors to more remote parts of this region would have been very limited, and visits infrequent, but the visitors treated to relatively high levels of hospitality when these visits occurred (see e.g. Bean 1956: 217). More specific insights for this particular homestead can be gained from an understanding of the transport conditions at the OKH, and changes to them. Again, from the discussion in chapter three, it is evident that, from its early occupancy, river steamers on the Darling would have made OKH more accessible, if sporadically, than other pastoral stations further west. And changing transport systems associated with the development of mining, particularly at Broken Hill after 1880, further impacted on the accessibility of OKH. Besides information from some of the homestead occupants and their descendants, further, often more specific, insights into the actual visitors to OKH can be gained from reports in local newspapers. These

Given that the core of OKH had been built by at least 1878 (see chapter one and Figure 3), its first occupants may have been Thomas J. Taylor and his household. Thomas Taylor was the first manager for the Kinchega Pastoral Estate, from September 1870 until October 1877, and was assisted by his two brothers, William and Matthew (Kearns 1970: 6). These three brothers may have lived together at OKH, but it is unclear whether or not Thomas Taylor, or either of his brothers, had a wife and children living with them there. Hardy (1969: 116) refers only to the ‘Taylor brothers’. Any occupancy of OKH by the Taylor household would have been short-lived, as Thomas Taylor, suffering from rheumatism, was replaced by Henry T. Phillips in 1877. Henry Phillips remained as manager of the estate for 10 years (Kearns 1970: 6). He was married to Miss Dark, and they had four children – Alice, Edith, Fanny and Samuel (Mrs Bobbie Chapman, pers. comm., phone conversation, July 1998). It is conceivable that OKH was built for their residency. One daughter was born at Kinchega on 1 March 1885 (Weekly Times, Melbourne, Saturday 14 Mar. 1885: 123

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? with his wife (e.g. Chronicle, Adelaide, 30 Nov. 1912, 42, Social Notices; The Register, Adelaide, 25 Dec. 1912; 12, Article, and 15 Jan. 1913: 12, Article; The Journal, Adelaide, Tuesday 14 Jan. 1913: 1). The Carters’ tenure would have been short-lived, before Ronald Allison became manager in 1915 (Kearns 1970: 6). At that date, though, Allison lived at Kars and the OKH became an ‘overseer’s cottage’, for Kinchega Station only (Kearns 1970: 6).

6, Family Notices), so would only have been about two years old when the Phillips family left. Samuel was also reportedly born at Kinchega (Wendy Chapman, pers. comm., email, 22 Sept. 2011) and must have been older and of school age while at Kinchega, going to school in Adelaide by paddle steamer (Bobbie Chapman, pers. comm., phone conversation, July 1998). Harold White Hughes and possibly Herbert White Hughes, two of H. B. Hughes’ sons, seem to have worked at Kinchega before managing other Hughes properties (see Kearns 1970: 6). They may have resided at OKH while Phillips was manager. Notably, Harold Hughes had been station bookkeeper between 1882 and 1887 (E. Gwynne Hughes, pers. comm., fax, 14 Oct. 1998; Chris Hughes, pers. comm., letter, 2 Jan. 1999).

Thus, until the end of 1912, most of the main occupants of OKH were likely to have been male – the three Taylor brothers, and Harold White Hughes. The only family with women and children residing there during this period was the Phillips family, although they would have lived there for 10 of the 15 to 20 years in which OKH was occupied prior to 1890.

In 1887, Henry T. Phillips left Kinchega and, according to Kearns (1970: 6), Harold White Hughes was manager until 1915. If so, he would have had continuous residency at this homestead for over 28 years. According to Chris Hughes, his grandfather Harold White Hughes did not marry until 1916, and had no children while resident in the homestead (pers. comm., letter, 2 Jan. 1999). Kearns reported (1970: 6) that Harold Hughes was replaced by Ronald Allison as manager in 1915. However, several newspapers recorded that Captain A. C. Carter took over management of Kinchega in November 1912, and took up residence there

These managers and their families were not the only residents of OKH prior to 1915, though. Other occupants reported during Harold Hughes’ residency included a woman cook and her husband, who was the groom, as well as a gardener, a cowboy, a bookkeeper and a horse-andbuggy boy (E. Gwynne Hughes, pers. comm., fax, 14 Oct. 1998). A photograph in the west garden of OKH (Figure 10), probably taken during the 1890 flood (Chris Hughes, pers. comm., letter, 2 Jan. 1999), includes a man wearing a long white apron in the manner of a male cook, possibly

Figure 10. View of west side of the Old Kinchega Homestead. From left: Florence Hawker, ‘Sissie’ (Laura Sophia Hughes), H. B. Hughes, Edgar Hughes, possibly a cook, and Harold Hughes. Photo probably taken in 1890. (Photo courtesy of Tom Hughes.)

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Who Would Have Come to Dinner and Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead 1912 (Border Chronicle, Bordertown, Friday 15 June 1945: 5), it is probable that these two daughters may have spent some of their adolescence at OKH.

of Mediterranean background. In the estate bookkeeping records (Kinchega Station Records n.d.), the occupations of other station employees named in the ‘Men’s Ledgers’ (July 1884–Dec. 1953) and the ‘Day Books’ (Nov. 1895–Apr. 1917 and Sept. 1908–July 1913) suggest they were likely to have resided at OKH during these early years. These include: storekeepers/bookkeepers who probably lived at the west end of Building C (Beven, pers. comm., conversation on site, July 1998; see Figures 3 and 4); housekeepers, house cooks, general servants and house help/housemaids, many of whom probably lived in the homestead complex; as well as grooms, kitchen cooks and gardeners, who may also have lived in some of the accommodation provided in the OKH complex. Such employees would have had a considerable presence among the homestead occupants, certainly outnumbering the main families living here, at least during the earlier years of the homestead’s occupancy. For many, though, their employment often seemed short-lived, such as M. Thomas, who was housekeeper between October and November 1907. The NSW 1901 census (Menindee, Broken Hill sub-district E–F) also indicates that James Marr lived at Kinchega at that date, with three other white males and two white females. However, his name does not occur in the bookkeeping records, so these people could have lived in another part of the station, for example near the woolshed.

According to his son Jim McLennan (pers. comm., phone conversation, 9 Mar. 1999), Donald McLennan, who had previously been manager of Netley Station (The Mail, Adelaide, Saturday 10 Oct. 1925: 30), was invited by Ronald Allison to be overseer of Kinchega in 1931, on a temporary basis. McLennan is listed in the Kinchega Estate booking-keeping records ‘General Ledger’ (no. 6: Jan. 1927–Dec. 1940) as an overseer from July 1932–January 1935. According to Jim McLennan, Donald McLennan had lived at OKH between 1931 and 1933 with his wife Maisie (nee Warren), and their two young children, Jim (born 1924) and Fay (born 1928) (Jim McLennan, pers. comm., phone conversation, 9 Mar. 1999). However, several newspaper reports place the Phelans at Kinchega in 1932 and 1933 (e.g. The Advertiser, Adelaide, 31 Oct. 1932: 10; Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, 29 Jan. 1932: 1; 12 Jan. 1933: 2; 22 Apr. 1933: 2; and 29 Apr. 1933: 2) and the McLennans there in 1934 and 1935 (Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, 5 Dec. 1934: 1 and 12 Jan. 1935, p. 1). It seems probable that these newspaper dates are correct, and that each family lived at OKH for a short time. Jim McLennan recalled a Chinese gardener living in the so-called ‘Chinaman’s hut’ (Building Y – see Figures 2 and 4), and a female cook whose husband was a handyman, when he lived at OKH (pers. comm., audio recording, Nov. 1999). E. Gwynne Hughes reported that Mrs Phelan could be heard singing ‘all around the Bong’ (E. Gwynne Hughes, pers. comm., fax, 14 Oct. 1998) – presumably the billabong adjacent to OKH.

In 1915, Arthur O’Hara Hayes, who had been overseer for Kars Station, became overseer at Kinchega Station, so he and his family became the principal residents of OKH. In September of that year, he had married Bertha Allen, who for a short time had been housekeeper to the bookkeeper at Kars (Feb.–Sept. 1915). The Hayes and their four children – Margaret (born 1917), Claudine (born 1920), Muriel (born 1922) and Owen (born 1923) – lived in the homestead until 1928, when Arthur Hayes bought his own station, ‘Box Vale’, near White Cliffs (Robin Taylor, pers. comm., fax, 14 Dec. 1998; email, 6 Dec. 2002). Again, this was a long occupancy of a family with women and children. One might also expect a still considerable number of homestead staff during this period, but perhaps fewer actual house staff, given that OKH was now home to an overseer’s family rather than a manager and his household.

It is not clear who the principal residents of the homestead were after the McLennans left, so there is an eight-year gap. Sandra Maiden reported (1995: 21–23) that the groom at Kinchega in 1936 was called Fred. According to Maiden, he and his new wife, Dolly, lived in a corrugated iron house, ‘lined with white-washed hessian’, with a ‘sheltered side verandah, where they often sat in cane chairs with plump tartan cushions. Dolly did “light duties” in the “big house” when needed’. From Fred and Dolly’s house the ‘station’s noon dinner bell’ could be heard, so it was likely to have been within the OKH complex. Although not clearly identifiable among the extant remains, it could conceivably have been Building R or Building Y (see chapter one, p. 3 and Figure 4).

The next likely occupants of OKH, from 1928 until probably 1933 (see The Advertiser, Adelaide, 8 July 1933: 10), were Michael Pheland and his wife, Alice Margaret (Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, Tuesday 25 Jan. 1949: 5), who was reportedly an opera singer (E. Gwynne Hughes, pers. comm., fax, 14 Oct. 1998). Margaret Carter (daughter of Arthur and Bertha Hayes) thought that Phelan had been an overseer at an outstation, possibly Balaklava (Robin Taylor, pers. comm., fax, 14 Dec. 1998). ‘M. Pheland’ is listed in the estate’s ‘Men’s Ledger’ from at least 1913, probably at Balaklava, but was then listed as an overseer from Jan. 1927 to Aug. 1932, possibly at Mulculca, then at Kinchega (General Ledger 6: Jan. 1927–Dec. 1940; see also Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, Tuesday 25 Jan. 1949: 5). The Barrier Miner (Tuesday 19 June 1945: 2) also reported that he had been manager of Mulculca Station. The Phelans had two daughters, Eileen and Elizabeth. As the Phelans married in

Between 1943 and 1949 the overseer, Albert Robert Beven, and his family lived in OKH. His family included his wife Linda, his son Peter (born 1940) and daughter Marion (born 1943) (Figure 11). During the Bevens’ residency there were two gardeners, first Mick Doherty (an alcoholic) and then Jo Burns, but no one lived in the ‘Chinaman’s hut’ during the Bevens’ residency (Peter Beven, pers. comm., phone conversation, 7 May 1999). After the Second World War, a Dutch couple, possibly called Crombie, were again cook and handyman and lived in the cook’s quarters in Building B (see Figure 4; Peter Beven, pers. comm., phone conversation, 8 Aug. 1998). 125

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? homestead were received with appropriate hospitality. For the rest of the occupancy of OKH, the principle residents were families, who would have been the hosts to many of the visitors to the homestead itself. Opportunities for social interactions – visitors? This homestead and its occupancy cover an interesting period in Australian history generally, and in the history of outback NSW more particularly, from shortly after European settlement in the latter until a decade after the Second World War. During this period, transport systems in this region changed from bullock cart and river steamer to motor car and diesel-electric train. It was also a period of changing social mores in Australia, and in concepts of being Australian. As discussed in chapter two, during this period Australians also manipulated British manners and etiquette to develop their own social mores and codes of hospitality. The questions here are, how did the relative remoteness of this homestead and related opportunities for social interaction impact on how these mores and codes were played out? To what extent might the social practices identified at this homestead reflect social mores in comparable contexts and in contemporary contexts in less remote parts of Australia, and to what extent might they be more specific? By positioning the OKH inhabitants within the social hierarchy of Australian society, chapter eight has provided some general answers to these questions. This section of this chapter will further examine the types of visitors and visits to OKH that have been recorded, towards more specific information on some of the likely social interactions that took place at OKH, and a better understanding of the roles of the material remains in these interactions, the networks and the associated social mores they involved, and how these changed throughout the occupancy of OKH.

Figure 11. Albert, Linda and Peter Beven and an unidentified man, seated on the east verandah of the Old Kinchega Homestead. (Photo courtesy of Peter Beven.)

After the Beven occupancy, the homestead’s principal, and possibly sole, residents had been two elderly bachelors, Sunny Barraclough and Archie Smith (Tom Hughes, pers. comm., conversation, Oct. 1998), who may have been overseers. Their residency must have been very shortlived, because, in the early 1950s, Harry and Melba Files and their children Arthur, Noeleen and Robin occupied the homestead (Sissy Clarke, nee Noeleen Files, pers. comm., conversation, June 2002) until 1955, when it was abandoned because of the expense of upkeep and when the estate trustee, E. Gwynne Hughes (pers. comm., fax, 14 Oct. 1998), built a new overseer’s house within walking distance of the woolshed and the station employees.33

Pre-1890 As discussed in chapter three, until at least the end of the nineteenth century, transport and communication systems in the west Darling region made it difficult for visitors to travel to OKH. The diaries and the transport systems discussed in chapter three also indicate that, in the 1860s and 1870s, visitors to this region were extremely rare. Even in the first decades of the twentieth century they were still infrequent and considered fairly special, with visitors to pastoral stations, like Miss Helena Una Grieve, staying for several months. However, in the more urban centre of Broken Hill, at the end of the nineteenth century, Mrs Delprat would have had a more active social life.

In summary, OKH was occupied first by the managers and then by overseers on the Kinchega Pastoral Estate, and their families, household staff and other station employees (e.g. bookkeepers, boundary riders and jackaroos), between at least 1878 and 1955. For certain phases, particularly prior to 1877, between 1887 and 1915, and c.1949/50, the main occupants for the homestead would have been men. During the late nineteenth century and probably in the first two decades of the twentieth century, though, the managers would have had housekeepers who would no doubt have maintained expected domestic standards and would have had some responsibility for seeing that any visitors to the

33

During the first couple decades of OKH’s occupancy, the main visitors were likely to have been owners or managers of nearby stations, or people on business trips – all invariably men. As noted above, the homestead at Kars Station, the closest to OKH on the Kinchega Estate, was over 60 km away. Bindara Station, to the east of Lake Tandou on the Darling River, was perhaps marginally more accessible by river steamer, but still c.50 km away overland.

This is currently the Kinchega National Park ranger’s house.

126

Who Would Have Come to Dinner and Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead So, while some socialisation might be expected between such homesteads, most visits would generally have been business-related, and the visitors would usually have had to stay overnight. Evidence for these types of stays are provided by Mrs Wallace in her description of travels up the Darling River from Adelaide (see chapter three, p. 28). For OKH more specifically, evidence for such overnight visitors can be found in the following report:

passengers to and from the region, for example taking young Samuel Phillips to school in Adelaide. While these steamers would also have brought visitors to OKH, we know little about such visits. Again, these visitors from further afield were probably largely business associates, who were mainly men, and who would generally have stayed overnight. If accommodated in the homestead, they were likely to have been of similar social status to the OKH occupants, or perhaps higher in the case of the estate owners, the Hughes family. Other visitors may have been family members or close friends of the managers’ families, who may have stayed for a considerable time. We can perhaps hypothesise that members of the Phillips, and possibly also the Taylor family would have visited via river steamer. As with Helena Una Grieve’s visit to Mordern Station some 20 years later, any such visits may have lasted months, especially when the Darling River became unnavigable, as it was in 1859, only one year after navigation had commenced on the Darling (Maiden 1989: 22).

A very lamentable accident occurred here on the 15th instant – I refer to the drowning of Mr. Joseph Dunn, the owner of Netley Station. On Tuesday evening as Mr. Dunn was returning home from Menindie, intending to call at Kinchega and stay overnight, and thence to his home on Wednesday morning, in crossing Menindie Creek (a creek connecting Menindie Lake with the Darling) he, instead of crossing the bridge, attempted to cross higher up, and in so doing the two horses which he was driving in the buggy got drowned, and he must have come to the same melancholy end ... (South Australian Chronicle and Weekly Mail, Adelaide, 26 Sept. 1874: 10).

H. B. Hughes would have been a frequent visitor from Adelaide, probably travelling by steamer when this was feasible during the first 10 years or so, and then perhaps by rail and coach or buggy from Broken Hill from 1888, as below. According to E. Gwynne Hughes (pers. comm., fax, 14 Oct. 1998), on occasion he brought his wife and/or daughter with him, which suggests these could be social as well as business visits. He certainly visited when his son, Harold White Hughes, was manager, probably in 1890 with his daughter, Laura Sophia, and one of her friends (Figure 10).

While Mr Dunn obviously did not stay at Kinchega on this occasion, this report indicates a common practice of overnight stays, at least, by men of similar social status to the managers at OKH. We cannot exclude the possibility that their wives and families may also have accompanied them on rare occasions, as Mrs Wallace did during her journey to the region. Both her and also Mrs White’s visits to other station homesteads lasted at least two weeks, even half a century later in the 1920s, in the case of Mrs White. We know of other visitors to Kinchega, from outside the region, during this early period, who were likely to have visited the area for business and professional reasons. For example, on 15 April 1879, Matthew Taylor, brother of Thomas Taylor and the last of the brothers working at Kinchega, was killed when the Darling Mail horses bolted and he tried to stop them (South Australian Register, Wednesday 16 Apr. 1879: 5). Maiden reported (1989: 73) that Taylor was accompanied by a visitor, Mr Simpson Newland, who wrote a novel about the outback, Paving the Way (1893), and later became president of the Royal Geographical Society (Albury Banner and Wodonga Express, 29 May 1896: 31). It seems likely that he was a visitor to OKH, who probably stayed the night and was a guest to dinner and breakfast, at least.

It is likely that the only visitors who might have ‘dropped’ in for a cup of tea during this earlier period would have been passengers passing through on a river steamer, although we have no evidence for this. While the township of Menindee was close by, Bobby Hardy’s quotation from Thomas Taylor (1969: 116) that he and his brothers ‘keep [the townspeople] at a respectful distance’ implies that such neighbours were unlikely to have been guests of the main occupants at OKH. Rather, most of the visitors would have been overnight guests, considered of similar social standing, for dinner and breakfast, as well as no doubt for tea, as described by Miss Grieve at the stations she visited several decades later. Post-1890

Being on the Darling River, in the first 15 to 20 years of its occupancy OKH probably received visitors more frequently than other homesteads further west. Indeed, Peter Beven commented (pers. comm., email, 3 Oct. 2011) that ‘  … because of the location of Kinchega and who owned it, there would have been a lot of visitors … hence the two guest rooms added’. This would have also applied to the earlier years of OKH, as these rooms had already been added prior to H. B. Hughes’ death in 1892 (i.e. one is visible in Figure 10, to the left of the photo, behind the unidentified man). That is, river steamers that brought stores and equipment and took away wool, when river levels permitted, also ferried

As mentioned above, the growth of mining in the area and the railway from Adelaide to Broken Hill in 1888 made a considerable difference to travel in this area, and would have increased transport opportunities and possibilities for visitors to come to OKH. Nevertheless, during the last decade of the nineteenth century, travel in the region was still difficult. Visits continued to be overnight, and longer, and travel unpredictable. For example, during a visit to the region, the Governor of NSW left Wilcannia for Broken Hill on a Tuesday morning, passing through Menindee. The first night he stayed at Weinterigo, the second at Menindee, the third at Kars Station (halfway to Broken 127

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Hill), and arrived at Broken Hill on the Friday (Western Grazier, Wilcannia, 30 Sept. 1899: 2; see also Barrier Miner, 4 Oct. 1899: 2), a journey of over four days, passing near OKH, and perhaps stopping there, on the third day.

anywhere, so people would take time to “call in” to have a cup of tea, but to also probably rest along the way…’. It is perhaps interesting, though, that Bertha Hayes, who took many photos of her family at OKH, seems not to have taken any of these visitors. The people who ‘called in’ during this period were possibly similar to the ‘special reporter’ whom Mr Carter met on the road, and were unknown to the family, rather than close friends.

As is evident from the discussion on the OKH occupants above, during the early decades of the twentieth century, newspapers reported the activities of Kinchega managers and overseers, and also of their wives and visitors. For example, the Adelaide Chronicle reported that Mrs Carter’s mother, Mrs Slade ‘had gone to visit [her in] New South Wales’ (Chronicle, 13 Sept. 1913: 42, Social Notes), so presumably at Kinchega.

After, or possibly shortly before, the Hayes left Kinchega, travel in the immediate area became even easier, with the railway arriving at nearby Menindee in late 1927. This made rail travel possible from Sydney to Adelaide, through Broken Hill and Menindee, and no doubt made it even easier for visits to be made to and from OKH, and for more frequent visits to be made by larger numbers of visitors from these urban centres. During the early 1930s, there are several reports in Broken Hill’s local newspaper of both Mrs McLennan and Mrs Phelan visiting Broken Hill from Kinchega and staying overnight at the Grand Hotel, often for a few days (e.g. Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, Thursday 12 Feb. 1931: 2; 12 Jan. 1933: 2; 5 Dec 1934: 1; 12 Jan. 1935: 1). Also reported in the Barrier Miner during this period were further visits to Kinchega, such as visits by the estate’s trustees in Adelaide, Messrs H. and J. Hughes (e.g. Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, 16 Mar. 1933: 2). E. Gwynne Hughes reported on the occasions when he visited Kinchega during his holidays, probably in the late 1920s and early 1930s, but that ‘homestead life at Kinchega seemed very dull to me as a boy’ (pers. comm., fax, 14 Oct. 1998). Thus, his father Edgar Hughes’ business trips, like his father’s before him, provided opportunities for family holidays, whether or not these were appreciated. Overseers’ family members also visited. Mrs Phelan’s sister, Mrs M. Cameron, went from Broken Hill to Kinchega on 7 January 1932 and returned to Broken Hill around 15 March 1932, perhaps coming originally from Adelaide. She thus spent at least two months with her sister at Kinchega, and possibly with other family in the region (Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, 7 Jan. 1932: 2 and 15 Mar. 1932: 2), similarly to Miss Grieve’s visit more than two decades earlier. In May 1934, a Miss Miller stayed at the Grand Hotel in Broken Hill, en route to Kinchega (Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, 1 May 1934: 1). She was probably another of Mrs Phelan’s sisters (Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, Saturday 25 Jan. 1919: 6), although the Phelans may have moved to Mulculca homestead by this date (The Advertiser, Adelaide, 5 Dec. 1933: 26). In October 1931, another female visitor to Kinchega was not a family member, but may have been a professional associate of Mrs Phelan: ‘Miss Ruby Macdonald, a violinist, who has been playing at most of the high-class places of entertainment in New York for the past four or five years, is at present on a visit to Kinchega station’ (Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, 14 Oct. 1931: 2).

By 1913, travel had further improved and a ‘special reporter’ travelling to the region was offered a lift by the pastoralist Mr Lance Lewis in his car. He reported: Wentworth [at the junction of the Murray and Darling Rivers] had previously been the limit of my journeyings on the Darling, and to break new ground is always interesting … but there are very few who tramp and carry their swags in these progressive days; everything runs on wheels … At the fine home at Netley we were met by Mr. John Dunne and treated with the usual generous hospitality of the bush … Evening however, was closing in, and we were bound for Kinchega, the magnificent station … and we had many miles yet to cover. It was dark long before we passed through the other long series of gates … We found the Kinchega head station after nearly diving over the bank of the river, but our troubles were not ended there, for the manager (Mr. A. Carter) was away at Kars, an outstation 33 miles away, and the place was filled with shearers ready to start work on the following Monday. So we dined in the big kitchen from tin plates, and dipped our hot skilly from the camp oven with a pint pot. Washed down with a liberal supply of scalding tea, it formed a regal repast, and then we pushed on over the last seven miles to Menindie, where we were comfortably housed by Mr. Underdown. No rocking was required after that 170 mile journey (Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, 24 Apr. 1913: 1). The following year, another ‘special reporter’ was invited to lunch at OKH after meeting Mr Carter on the road (The Register, 31 July 1914: 3). These reports indicate that guests could be unexpected, and could be unknown to the hosts, but were still fed, if not housed. As discussed in chapter three (p. 27), by July 1919 the train line from Broken Hill to Menindee was operational. At this time, Arthur Hayes and his family resided at OKH. Margaret Carter (nee Hayes) remembered that there were ‘only two rooms … where they lived and another two rooms that were for the Gentlemen when they visited’ (Robin Taylor, pers. comm., email, 6 Dec. 2002). Robin Taylor, daughter of Owen Hayes and granddaughter of Arthur Hayes, refers to her father’s diaries mentioning ‘the number of people who would call in to visit. It is hard to remember that it would take days/weeks to travel

While we know that women in the Hughes family, and their friends, were visitors to OKH at least prior to 1892, these newspaper reports, in 1913 and again in the 1930s, suggest increasing opportunity and desire for women to travel to this region and to OKH, and not necessarily for purely social reasons. Certainly these reports and Miss 128

Who Would Have Come to Dinner and Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead Grieve’s diary indicate that women’s travel to this area in the early decades of the twentieth century would often have involved long-term visits.

began to appear in the mid-1890s, such as of numerous picnic races and a ball given in Menindee by ‘bachelors of Kinchega, Netley, and Tolarno’ (Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, 28 May 1895: 2). At this stage, though, at the end of the nineteenth century, there are no reports of such events taking place at Kinchega. In the first decades of the twentieth century, cricket matches, between Menindee and Kinchega, seem to have taken place in Menindee (Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, 3 Jan. 1906, p. 3; 6 Jan. 1908: 3). Reported social events with large gatherings did take place at Kinchega during the 1920s, but in the woolshed – e.g. a Menindee school concert in 1922 (Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, 16 Dec. 1922: 4) and a dance and supper in 1929 (Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, 5 Aug. 1929: 1). At least one cricket match took place at Kinchega in the 1930s (Barrier Miner, Broken Hill, 25 Aug. 1931: 3), although its precise location is not clear.

After the Phelans’ occupancy there are few such newspaper reports of visitors to OKH. Jim McLennan did not mention any visitors. As a young boy, he seemed more interested in the machinery and equipment around the homestead, and in catching yabbies in the billabong with a sheep’s head in a tin (pers. comm., phone conversation, 1999) than in any visitors. While Peter Beven referred to Kinchega receiving lots of visitors, he also commented that the guest rooms in OKH were ‘hardly ever entered, only when Hughes visited or there were Christmas guests’ (Peter Beven, pers. comm., conversation on site, 1998). The Advertiser reported that Sir Howard Lloyd, chairman, and directors of the Bank of Adelaide, made a weekend trip to Kinchega Station in October 1947, taking as his guests Messrs O. L. Isaachsen, F. M. Waddy and Arthur Ford (The Advertiser, Adelaide, 13 Oct. 1947: 4). However, they may well have stayed at Kars Homestead, or indeed in Menindee. This record, and Peter Beven’s comments, indicate that it was now possible to go to Kinchega for the weekend, and that long-term visits and probably overnight stays, and accompanying hospitality, had become rarer.

On the basis of these reports, oral information and the diaries discussed in chapter three, visitors to OKH prior to 1890 were likely to have been relatively rare compared with later periods, but perhaps more common than in more remote outback homesteads. Such visitors came largely for business purposes, including other pastoralists in the region. Some family members also may have visited, but probably mainly members of the Hughes’ family. Most such visitors would have had to stay overnight, and to have been fed accordingly. Some could conceivably have ‘dropped in’ for tea, if they were travelling on a river steamer that stopped at Kinchega to drop supplies or pick up produce. Few visitors to and from Menindee, however, were likely to have been invited into the homestead.

Indeed, from the 1940s, it was possible to fly to Kinchega. In 1951, Mr E. Gwynne Hughes, a former Second World War fighter pilot (The Advertiser, Adelaide, 4 Mar. 2006) and his wife and children reportedly flew to Kinchega for a ‘station holiday’ (The Advertiser, Adelaide, 8 Nov. 1951). Thus, air travel added a further dimension to outback visits, their frequency and their length of stay.

After c.1890, there were likely to have been more visitors, or at least more frequent visits, with improved rail transport to Broken Hill. Again, apart from the Hughes, visitors were probably still mainly business associates. While it is conceivable that families from neighbouring stations also visited, for social networking opportunities, there is a lack of specific evidence for this at OKH. In the first two decades of the twentieth century there is seemingly some evidence of change, with Mrs Slade’s visit to her daughter in 1913. Motor-car travel at this time also made it possible for some visitors to ‘call in’, unannounced and without having to be put up for the night. The reports of dances and concerts also suggest that, by the 1920s, people on Kinchega Station, and possibly the OKH occupants, were now entertaining local people on a fairly large scale. However, the newspaper reports of Mrs Phelan’s visitors serve to indicate that into the 1930s these types of visits were still considered special and newsworthy, and probably more elite.

In summary, these documentary and oral reports give us insights into the circumstances in which people visited OKH, throughout most of its occupancy. The newspaper reports tend to focus on visits by business associates and by the Hughes family, but also visits associated with calamitous events and reports by roving journalists. The reports of social visits by Mrs Carter and Mrs Phelan and their family members and associates indicate that even in the 1930s such visits were of significant enough interest to be worthy of reporting to people in the Broken Hill area. Mrs Phelan’s visits and visitors were likely to have been of interest because of her parentage and opera-singing career, because she was the wife of the overseer of Kinchega Station, but particularly because such visits were rare. It is perhaps notable that such ‘Social Notes’ seem to have been more common in the Barrier Miner between the wars than before the First World War or after the Second World War, during Lake’s phase of re-emergent Britishness. Mrs Carter’s mother’s 1913 visit even received attention in Adelaide, though. Peter Beven’s comments suggest that his mother would appear to have received few overnight guests in the 1940s. Essentially, this is an incomplete record, but gives us some sense of these visits and their durations, and how these changed.

Stopping at OKH for dinner or tea In this section, the above information about occupants of OKH and their visitors is integrated with the foregoing analyses of the tablewares and teawares recorded at OKH and in the Kinchega Estate bookkeeping records, to demonstrate the relationship of changing social interactions to changing dining and tea-drinking practices

Newspaper reports of more public and more wide-reaching social events, and their attendees, in the general region 129

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? and associated changes in social mores and codes of hospitality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

would have been few in number. The latter is perhaps confirmed in the relatively limited numbers of vessels recorded in each of these earlier sets, compared with the twentieth-century sets. An exception here is the larger Rhine pattern set, which conceivably continued in use in later years. Middle-class visitors from the urban centres may have found these table settings less glamorous than they were used to. Nevertheless, they would have assured them that the genteel standards they would expect in more urban regions could be maintained in this context, albeit with perhaps quaintly old-fashioned and rather common, and possibly slightly mismatched, settings. And they may have been impressed by the relatively well-laid table the OKH occupants could provide, with these different sets and their range of forms for a range of different courses – including soup with the Asiatic Pheasant set (see Table 5.3). Miss Grieve appears to have been sufficiently impressed to photograph a seemingly comparable table setting at Tarella Station decades later (Figure 9). A well-stocked garden and orchard, at least after the first few years of the homestead’s occupancy, as well as birds from the billabong (E. Gwynne Hughes, pers. comm., fax, 14 Oct. 1998), not to mention a considerable supply of mutton, meant that these dinner courses would have matched those in more urban centres, in terms of nutrition and freshness and perhaps also variety and seeming opulence. These visitors may have also breakfasted well on a Willow pattern set, and been served lunch on yet another almost matching set. However, Mrs Cambridge noted that, for less remote pastoral stations (see chapter three, p. 28), few women were likely to have been among such guests. Also, some of these sets may have been used for rather formal dining even when there were no guests to entertain (see Hayes 2011: 39), to maintain good Victorian middle-class standards, when the Taylor brothers dined together or when the Phillips family sat down for dinner. Some sets, such as the Cable pattern and mid-blue lined sets, and perhaps also the Willow pattern set, could have been used on a more everyday basis by the household.

Pre-1890 Dinner guests In chapter five, some six main tableware sets were identified that were purchased, at least in part, prior to 1890, for some of which their production can be dated prior to the construction of OKH. As was noted, none of these appear to have been purchased as original, complete sets, suggesting that the earliest occupants were either unable to obtain matching sets or were not primarily concerned to ensure they matched. These sets comprised at least three or four dinner sets – of Asiatic Pheasant, Rhine, bluelined, and probably Albion patterns. The Willow and Cable pattern sets could also have been dinner sets, or possibly lunch or breakfast sets. The OKH occupants who would have used these sets were most probably the Taylor brothers, the Phillips family and Harold White Hughes’ household. It is likely that they had brought some of these tableware sets with them when they moved to Kinchega. They may have purchased them in one of the main centres in Australia (i.e. Adelaide, Sydney or Melbourne) or even brought such sets with them when emigrating from Britain. Some were already several decades older than OKH, and acquiring them while resident at OKH during these early years was likely to have been difficult. The Phillips may have ‘inherited’ some of the Taylors’ sets – which could possibly also have been used in the earlier homestead – and Harold Hughes some of the Phillips’ sets. Or, perhaps more logically, this range of different sets in a few short years could indicate that each brought their own tablewares with them and then took them away with them to their next residence when they left Kinchega, leaving behind a few breakages. It is conceivable, though, that while some sets were likely to have been the property of the individual households prior to coming to Kinchega, at least part of the more extensive Rhine pattern set was probably purchased new, if not matching. Also, this set and perhaps the Willow pattern set appear to have become fairly ‘institutional sets’ for a series of OKH households, who added to them throughout the life of the homestead. As discussed in chapter eight, all the pre1890 sets at OKH were relatively common, and somewhat old-fashioned, types. However, the range of vessels within most of them indicates that these early households could have used them to provide a fairly genteel table setting, if required. The more decorative Asiatic Pheasant, Albion and Rhine sets may have been used by, and some possibly even reserved for, visitors, who were mainly other station owners, business associates, H.  B. Hughes and possibly Hughes family members, or people like Mr Simpson Newland (in April 1879), who would have been guests overnight, and often for longer periods. Such visits were relatively infrequent, though, and dependent on the state of the river and the weather, and visitors on each occasion

Guests for tea In chapter six, some 10 matching teaware sets were identified, which seem to have been predominantly what could be considered small ‘tête à tête’ tea sets. These sets comprise a range of different types and colours of transfer-printed earthenwares, as well as a bone china set in a blue Chelsea Sprig or Chelsea Grape pattern. The latter teaware type seems to have been common among the tea sets discussed in chapter eight (see Appendix 9), while most of the earthenware patterns identified at OKH were not specifically mentioned at these other sites. It is perhaps notable that there seem to have been more teaware sets than dinner sets during this period. The small sizes of these decorated sets, particularly compared with later post-1890 tea sets, suggest that tea was taken in small, perhaps exclusive, groups during the earlier years of the homestead’s occupancy. However, in chapter six (p. 69) we suggested that, because of evident similarities among the motifs within each colour, these variously coloured tea sets 130

Who Would Have Come to Dinner and Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead could have been used together as a complementary set to entertain visitors, or the whole lot used together to produce one large and colourful mixed set such as that observed by Elizabeth Ramsay-Laye at the Forest Creek gold diggings (see chapter two, p. 18), during a period when matching sets, while ‘obligatory’ for genteel tea-drinking, were not yet a ‘necessity’ (see chapter four, p. 37). Some sprigged bone china and gilt banded earthenware tea sets may have been used for more special occasions. Frustratingly, we do not have evidence for the estate purchasing teawares in the earlier period, but the variation among these earlier sets and the small size of each apparent set suggests they were not institutionalised purchases and that such institutionalised purchasing of teawares started c.1890.

put on for such visitors (see Figure 7). Any such mixing of sets would seem to have been according to colour, rather than by pattern, as argued by Grace Karskens for dinner sets in Australia from the 1850s (1999: 157), as none of the patterns recorded at OKH are repeated in the different colours. A further argument for the presence of these large numbers of relatively small sets might be that the early residents of OKH had little idea about the remoteness of their new home, and brought with them tea-settings to display their gentility, or genteel aspirations, that actually proved surplus to their opportunities and requirements in this context. Such tea sets may have remained in the homestead, or perhaps have been handed down to other homestead employees, to be broken and discarded on the homestead rubbish dump many years later. It is perhaps relevant here that remains of a brown transfer-printed saucer were found associated with the ‘slab hut’ (Building R) that was probably always occupied by homestead staff. This was one of only five fragments of ceramic fineware from this building, among a considerable assemblage of metal and glass artefacts (see Allison and Cremin 2006: 53). This saucer fragment may give a glimpse of attempts at respectability and upward mobility among some of the OKH staff, even if this saucer may have been a handme-down, second-hand vessel (see Spencer-Wood and Heberling 1987: 71).

All the cups with these printed patterns whose rim diameters can be identified are close in size to Berthoud’s average teacup size (see Table 4.2). However, those in the black, green and red sets are notably smaller, and could conceivably have been used for coffee. None of the ‘white and gold’ or plain teawares can be definitely dated to this period, and there is no evidence that the former were being purchased by the estate prior to 1895 (see chapter seven, p. 101). It seems reasonable to presume that enamel or tin mugs may have been used for everyday tea-drinking by most homestead staff during these early years. These decorated ceramic tea sets were likely to have been used by the managers and their families, with some perhaps used only for more special tea-drinking occasions when genteel display was required.

As discussed above, there was less opportunity in these early years for people who were not house guests to ‘come to tea’ than was the case in the more urban and semi-rural contexts discussed in chapter eight. The only possibility was passengers from the river steamers. Again, there were unlikely to have been more than one or two of these visitors at a time, and they were most probably men travelling in the region on business.

Guests who stayed overnight at the homestead would have usually taken tea at breakfast, and for morning or afternoon tea (see Miss Grieve on tea-drinking occasions at the homesteads she visited – chapter three, p. 29). However, on each occasion these visitors may not have been more than one or two in number, so any one of the ‘tête à tête’ sets would have sufficed. These decorative sets, particularly those with the smaller cups, might be considered the types of sets used by women and female guests. However, such guests – whether relatives from afar, members of the Hughes family, or not-so-distant neighbours – were likely to have been even more limited in number, or even nonexistent, during the early years. So, if any such tea-drinking gatherings did indeed take place, they would certainly have been small, intimate occasions, for which these ‘tête à tête’ sets would have been well suited. It is perhaps more likely, though, given what we know about the occupants of, and the types of visitors to, OKH during this period, that tea was served in these sets to male occupants and to visitors, in demonstration of their own gentility or genteel aspirations (compare Figure 6). One explanation for so many smallsized sets when there were likely to have been relatively few visitors to use them might be a particular desire to use matching tea sets for visitors and so, unlike the tableware sets, a different complete set was acquired if one vessel broke. Alternatively, as noted above, the early occupants of OKH may not have been concerned about mixing their teaware sets if more cups and saucers were needed. Such mixed sets could conceivably have been used on picnics

Thus, the apparent rarity of tea-drinking occasions at OKH requiring decorated tea sets does not explain why so many patterned tea sets have been identified there. It would also seem that these sets were not used for very rare, or possibly non-existent, visits by women but were probably used more frequently for male visitors, and perhaps by the male homestead occupants when there were no visitors. Therefore, these ‘pretty cups and saucers’ (Knight 2011: 7) would not have projected the traditional masculinity of tea-drinking in a rural setting, described by Knight (see chapter two, p. 19). They are also unlikely to have represented women’s ‘privileged access to tea’ (Knight 2011: 21), as there were unlikely to have been enough female visitors to this homestead during these early years for such ‘privilege’. Rather, such urban concepts of gendered genteel performance need to be translated in this different middle-class setting where women were largely absent, and social codes adapted so that they could be maintained in this remote context. So, these small decorated tea sets imply that the predominantly male occupants of OKH had facilities for more refined tea-drinking activities than Mrs Wallace a decade earlier, or indeed Mrs Gunn in a more remote region in the early twentieth century. However, life in these early years of OKH still offered 131

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? few opportunities or circumstances to make use of these facilities. Opportunities needed to be seized upon, and perhaps modified, to demonstrate good manners and genteel social values. The numbers of these tea sets at OKH during this period, compared with the sites analysed in chapter eight (see Table 8.2) suggest that the earlier OKH occupants had expected not to be so isolated, but to have greater opportunity to display their middle-classness than was the case.

a short time before his death in 1892, but more particularly to his descendants and their families. Besides the Hughes family and friends visiting Harold Hughes, the visitors to OKH were probably still mainly business associates and officials. From the documentary evidence, it would seem that only by the end of this period were other types of visitors able to travel by motor car to visit this region. Most of the visitors to OKH during this period were probably still overnight guests. It is likely that they continued to use some of the pre-1890 tableware sets, particularly the Rhine and Willow pattern sets. It is tempting to speculate about who would have purchased the brand-new Cuba dinner set. Perhaps it was a present to Harold Hughes from his mother, to ensure her son kept up with the latest fashions. Or perhaps it had belonged to the Carters. In any event, it would have made for a much smarter, up-to-date, fully matching, and probably more expensive and more genteel table setting than had previously been seen at OKH, demonstrating changes in social dining practices that were taking place towards the end of the nineteenth century. This could reflect prosperity for the Kinchega Estate, at a time when smaller holdings were suffering from overstocking and rabbits (see Hardy 1960: 192–95), but more probably a change in attitudes to dining practices and a break from the value placed on using traditional family dinner sets which may have been brought out from the ‘old country’. This brand new set of a rarer pattern suggests that dining practices at OKH at this time were certainly a cut above most of those discussed in chapter eight, with the exception of the Martin household at Viewbank, who were using several rarer transfer-printed earthenware dinner sets and also, seemingly, bone china tablewares (see Hayes 2014a: tables 5.3 and 5.4).

It is noteworthy that there is a lack of ceramic teapots at OKH datable before 1890. It is possible that such components – teapots, sugar bowls and milk jugs – of any more genteel tea service during these early years may have been of silver. The majority of both the tableware and teaware vessels from OKH can be dated after 1891. These remains and their social messages will be discussed here, as far as possible according to three separate phases associated with some of the changes of occupancy of OKH and with changes in transport conditions – i.e. c.1890–1915, 1915 to the end of the 1930s, and 1940s–1955. c.1890–c.1915 During the first period, prior to 1915, OKH was still occupied by a manager and his household, and the railway line from South Australia had reached Broken Hill. The motor car was just starting to be used in this region towards the end of this period. Dinner guests After 1890, there was a notable change in the tablewares recorded at OKH. It seems that, for the first time, the occupants had a new, matching, and probably fashionable, dinner set that may have been purchased as a single event shortly after 1890 – the Cuba pattern set. At least some of the Rhine pattern dinner set was purchased after 1887, and it is also conceivable that some of the other tablewares at OKH were purchased towards the end of this period. For example, the Meakin gilded dark blue-banded tablewares could have been purchased after 1912, but most of the vessels marked Empire in this set can be dated after 1925. Likewise, some of the relief-moulded, the plain circular and plain 12-sided tableware sets could conceivably have been purchased by 1912.

It is notable that the Cuba set seems to have been a relatively small dinner set, compared with other post-1890 sets, although with a notably high proportion of platters and soup plates. Despite changed transport and communication systems associated with the rise of Broken Hill, though, the numbers, types and frequency of visitors to OKH, or at least those who were invited to dinner or to stay the night, seem to have been largely the same as those during the previous period. However, they may have been surprised by the modern table setting, and also by the courses provided. Only one soup plate was identified among the pre-1890s tableware sets – in the Asiatic Pheasant set. By contrast, the Cuba pattern set showed a relative predominance of soup plates, which also became more common among the OKH twentieth-century sets. It would appear that, at the turn of the century, soup can be identified as an important separate course at OKH. In this regard, the occupants appear to been paying homage to English dining fashions that developed in the late nineteenth century, and that became fashionable in colonial urban contexts, and at the same time were more international. Lauren Goldstein noted that middle-class English food writers in the late nineteenth century frequently recommended embracing other cuisines, particularly French, and that eating soup was part of being middle class and living proper middle-

During this period, the homestead was occupied by Harold White Hughes and, for a short time, by the Carters. The arrival of the railway at Broken Hill undoubtedly made it easier for visitors from Adelaide to plan their visit to Kinchega, although they still had to cover c.130  km travelling on from Broken Hill to Kinchega by stagecoach. While the final part of their journey may have been rough and may have required overnight stops at other stations and hotels along the way, they would no longer be subjected to the vagaries of the Darling River levels for transport by river steamer. This would have applied to H. B. Hughes for 132

Who Would Have Come to Dinner and Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead class moral values (e.g. in terms of economy, efficiency, cleanliness and defining national cookery) (Goldstein 2015: 132–33, 137). Crook noted a likely relative increase in the numbers of soup tureens for sale in the 1890s, and the substantially higher price of soup tureens over other vessels, among better-quality sets in Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd 1894 catalogue (2005: 19–20; 2008; 125–26). The apparent growing, and perhaps increasingly prestigious, fashion for soup in urban Australia may have lagged behind the English fashion, but was quickly taken up in the outback, as seems evident with this Cuba dinner set. Hot soup was probably not an important part of meals in the earlier years of life at Kinchega, in temperatures that could reach into the fifties centigrade and where meat was plentiful, and when perhaps older social values were more important than current fashions. However, it seems to have provided an important signal of the social values and status of Harold White Hughes, or conceivably of the Carters, within colonial society at the end of the century. Local conditions and access to resources seem to have been overridden by the importance placed on portraying such signals to the still relatively limited numbers of guests to dinner. This may seem incongruous at a time when demand for meat in the major urban centres was high and considered ‘a nutritional marker of status’ (Belich 2005: 7; although see Leong-Salobir 2017 on the significance of vegetables). There is also seemingly another socio-cultural change in table settings at OKH after 1890. Most of the post-1890 sets can be identified as dinner sets rather than including specialised breakfast and lunch settings (see chapter five, p. 63). Given the continued need for guests to stay overnight, this was, again, more likely a change in attitudes to maintaining middle-class practices and social values – with less differentiated table settings – rather than a change in the types of visitors and the length of their stays.

and bone china cups and saucers, as well as earthenware teapots with the mark ‘England’, can be dated after 1890, and some prior to 1915, such as a ‘white and gold’ and plain Grafton cup and saucer, respectively (Tables 6.10– 11). Teawares with Phoenix and Blair marks could also conceivably have belonged to this period. While the estate bookkeeping records indicate that teawares were being purchased by the estate from at least 1891, and from local suppliers in Broken Hill, the first specific record for the purchase of ‘white and gold’ teawares was in 1895. What is notable here, though, is that the estate was purchasing teawares for its homesteads during this period. As with opportunities for dinner guests, opportunities for tea-drinking gatherings at OKH during this period may have changed only slightly from the previous period. With more traffic between Menindee and the new mining community at Broken Hill, though, some of these travellers may have ‘called in’ for a cup of tea, although they would have still had to travel some 15 km out of their way to do so. Any associated change in tea-drinking practices may have been less in terms of the numbers of people for tea on each occasion, and more in terms of their frequency and the quality of the tea service. The apparent institutionalisation of the estate’s purchasing of ‘white and gold’ teawares indicates that it was concerned to ensure respectable, or even relatively genteel, tea-drinking standards and associated standards of hospitality among its managers’ households, although perhaps not with the same ideas about etiquette that the previous small, decorated tea sets would have provided. Also, the evidence for similar shapes and fabrics among the plain white and gilded teawares at OKH, datable to this period, suggests that both these ‘sets’ could have been used interchangeably on such occasions. The more old-fashioned transfer-printed earthenwares, and limited decorated bone china, and some of the newer ones noted above, may have continued to be used for what may have been more exclusive tea-drinking occasions involving probably more socially valued overnight guests, who may have been more concerned about the provision of more genteel tea-drinking standards than the travellers who may have passed through and received hospitality at OKH.

Guests for tea After 1890, there also seem to have been changes to the tea-drinking practices at OKH, with a move away from small, decorated earthenware tea sets, although probably not completely. One small, brown transfer-printed earthenware set decorated with Wattle pattern can be dated from 1892 (Table 6.8). This pattern demonstrates the rising popularity, in the 1880s and 1890s with the Federal project (Lawrence 2003a: 221), of Australian as opposed to colonial motifs, and so grants a new Australian, less essentially British, flavour to these tea sets. A fragment from an earthenware saucer with a pink and yellow floral decal pattern (Table 6.17 and Figure 132) is also likely to date after 1890, as are the remains of a single bone china cup with a red decal (Table 6.20 and Figure 134) and a porcelain cup with gilded and floral decoration (Table 6.23 and Figure 150), which could conceivably have been parts of elegant tea sets, replacing the earlier transfer-printed sets during this period (see Prossor et al. 2012: 815).

As with the OKH tablewares, though, no higher-quality European porcelain teawares were recorded at OKH, and bone china was reserved for teawares, perhaps as a cheaper way to display social status than with bone china tablewares, as might be found in comparable middle-class households in urban contexts during this period. Essentially, though, the relatively limited quantities of tablewares and teawares that can be dated to this period specifically, combined with the lack of evidence for increasing numbers of visitors, perhaps bears witness to a relative continuity of the frequency of opportunities for social interaction at OKH. However, the OKH occupants had more up-to-date table settings and probably menus, and had more direct access to appropriate apparatus, than prior to 1890. So, they were probably now more on a par

More significantly among the OKH teawares, though, is that a number of ‘white and gold’ and plain earthenware, 133

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? with their urban and semi-rural counterparts in providing appropriate dining standards, at least to the types of visitors who would have been concerned about such social values. Many of their tea settings, though, were less exclusive, and could cater for a wider range of types of visitors.

the Hayes’ occupancy from 1915–c.1928. And newspaper reports suggest relatives would stay for several months during the following Phelan occupancy. Given improved travel conditions, such family visits may have been more frequent than previously. Also, passers-by could ‘call in’ for a meal and did not need to stay overnight.

1915 to the end of the 1930s

It seems that the gilded dark blue-banded and the 12-sided sets would have been the most likely sets used for such visitors. As noted in chapter seven (p. 98), both the gilded dark blue-banded and the 12-sided sets would have been relatively inexpensive dinner sets although seemingly higher priced, and of higher social value, than the reliefmoulded sets. On the basis of the relative numbers of recorded vessels in each of these sets, the gilded dark blue-banded set may have served larger gatherings than the 12-sided set. As discussed in chapter seven (p. 99), the gilded dark blue-banded set was probably a more ‘institutionalised’ one, although seemingly not by the estate but perhaps by the homestead occupants. It was also potentially a more elaborate set, used for visitors such as the Hughes family throughout the next few decades. While the gilded dark blue-banded set may not have been particularly high quality, it was no doubt seen as adequate for overseers’ households to serve dinner on to the station owners. The 12-sided set has no apparent replacements, and does not seem to have been one of the sets purchased by the estate in 1915 or 1921 (see Appendix 10). With its wide range of vessel types and fashionable shape, but seemingly a smaller-sized and relatively inexpensive set, it may have been a specific possession, possibly of the Hayes family, used for special family occasions whether or not these involved visitors.

During this period, covering the First World War and the interwar years, the homestead was occupied by several different overseers and their families. By 1919, the railway had reached Menindee from Broken Hill; by 1927, it had also reached Menindee from Sydney; and by 1938, dieselelectric trains also connected Sydney to Broken Hill, though Menindee. Dinner guests The post-1915, or more specifically post-1912, tablewares from OKH included three main tableware sets – a gilded dark blue-banded one (Tables 5.9–11), a plain clear-glazed 12-sided one (Table 5.24), and a relief-moulded set (Tables 5.12–23) – as well as a plain white set (Table 5.25), all earthenware. As noted above, at least one of the recorded vessels in the gilded dark blue-banded tableware set, marked Meakin, could have been purchased from 1912, but most of the vessels in this relatively large set, marked Empire ware, would have been purchased from the late 1920s. The 12-sided set could have been purchased after 1913, but was more probably purchased in the 1920s. Similarly, although some of the large relief-moulded tablewares could date as early as 1910 (see chapter five, p. 54), most seem to date from the early 1920s, and the Meakin centenary plates date to 1951 (Table 5.23). Essentially, a lot of tablewares and dinner sets seem to have been purchased after 1920.

From the tablewares recorded at OKH and those in the estate bookkeeping records, there would seem to be further changes during this period in the types of food and how it was being served. In the two dinner sets – the gilded dark blue-banded set and the 12-sided set – there was still a considerable variation among the sizes of different plates, and among the serving dishes, suggesting that table settings at OKH continued to cater for a number of different courses. As with the Cuba pattern set, soup plates were relatively prominent, particularly in the 12-sided set. However, the gilded dark blue-banded set also has a number of bowls. Judging by their size, these bowls were likely to have been soup ‘coupes’ (see Table 4.2), that is, without a marly, and to document a less formal, but perhaps fashionable, way of serving soup. Soup coupes became predominant in the mail order catalogues after 1923 (see chapter five, p. 60), but are first referred to in the estate bookkeeping records in 1935 (see Appendix 5).

While the 12-sided set was likely to have been a one-off set, the other main sets include replacements, possibly over the following decades. The dark blue-banded vessels, for example, all featured a band of similar width in a similar dark-blue colour, despite the different manufacturers. The profiles, too, of the Meakin and the Empire ware vessels are similar, although the Meakin plates had a thicker marly. Overall, the dark blue-banded vessels would have had the appearance of being one probably quite large and gilded set, despite the different makers and marginally different profiles (see chapter five, p. 51). The invoice books show purchases of small numbers of tableware vessels before 1935, when a complete dinner set of unknown decoration was bought for someone on the estate. With the advent of motor-car travel and then the arrival of the railway to Menindee, any guests from Sydney, Adelaide or other regions could have visited OKH much more easily than in previous periods. It would also seem, from the documentary evidence, that Kinchega Station entertained the local community more, and in large numbers, although not necessarily at the homestead or for dinner. From Margaret Carter’s comment, overnight visitors would appear to have been few in number during

As discussed in chapter seven (p. 97), most of the identifiable orders for meat dishes predate 1915, and this concurs with the higher proportion of pre-1890 platters recorded at OKH (see chapter five, Table 5.28). Two of four or five post-1890 platters belong to the Cuba vessels. This pattern of change in vessel types could conceivably suggest less of a focus on roasts as the main meat dish and perhaps 134

Who Would Have Come to Dinner and Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead other types of meat, and fish, predominating in this period when, for example, more tinned meats and fish would have been available, and conceivably a luxury.34 That said, roasts were no doubt an important part of many dining occasions at OKH, before and after 1915, particularly of the more formal dinners, such as Sundays, and when there may have been guests. It is interesting, therefore, to note that the first, and only, gravy boat recorded at OKH belongs to the gilded dark blue-banded set and can be dated after 1928. A ‘gravy boat’ is first recorded in the Kinchega Estate bookkeeping records in February 1900, and a sauce boat in November 1899. Such vessels were part of the eighteenth-century English tableware fashion, adopted from French cuisine. The Kinchega gravy boats would seem very late comers, possibly coming even later to the OKH table. Perhaps gravy, as part of traditional English fare (Goldstein 2015: 136), was served in a less fashion-conscious vessel during the early days at OKH, perhaps in one of the plethora of other types of serving dishes, or away from the dinner table. Crook noted ‘sauce boats’ in 1897 mail order catalogues (2008: 69–70), but included ‘gravy boats’ among serving dishes used for more elaborate occasions and considered of limited utility to working-class households (2008: 233). The estate bookkeeping records and the types of tableware fabrics and vessels recorded at OKH suggest that, prior to the end of the nineteenth century, with the exception of the post-1890 Cuba dinner set, the households on the estate were not particularly fashion-conscious, in terms of their table settings, but that this changed in the twentieth century with more specialised types of serving vessels to complete a more socially acceptable table setting. Perhaps Mrs Phelan noted the lack of gravy boats at OKH and ordered at least one for what was likely to be a set used to entertain the estate owners to appropriate middle-class standards when they visited. Perhaps she also brought the dining table at OKH up to date with soup coupes instead of soup plates.

of these rather large tablewares, according to vessel type, but with a limited range of types, and with little attention to matching the moulded patterns. These vessels are likely to have been the tablewares that were continuously purchased by the estate. They indicate little variety within the table settings, and meals that probably comprised only one or two courses. Interestingly, there is a greater range of sizes, and therefore possibly precise functions, among the fewer plates in the plainer white set than among the more numerous relief-moulded vessels. This could conceivably indicate that this set had a much longer life at OKH, as suggested in chapter five (p. 62). Most notable, among all the tableware sets datable after c.1910, is that there were fewer different sets than in the comparatively shorter earlier period, but that these were larger sets. This suggests occasions where more people would have dined together, or perhaps lunched, at OKH. However, as noted by Margaret Carter, during the Hayes’ occupancy until 1927/8, overnight guests at OKH were likely to have been few in number. During this period, visitors could probably dine, or lunch, at OKH and then travel to Menindee, or another station, or even Broken Hill, for their overnight accommodation. Also, many of these guests, some perhaps arriving uninvited, are likely to have eaten from more ‘everyday’ sets, such as the relief-moulded set. They would not have been considered as exceptional, or as exclusive, as during previous periods and, while treated to traditional outback hospitality, when they were dining at OKH this would have been in a more casual manner than in earlier years. The apparent increase in seemingly more basic tablewares at OKH also suggests that, by this period, tin plates were diminishing as the usual tablewares for station workers and homestead staff, who were now likewise using these ceramic tablewares. This may account for the numerous purchases of relatively cheap tablewares recorded in the bookkeeping records. Social distinctions between the main homestead occupants – the overseers’ families, whatever their parentage and backgrounds and future positions – and the station workers and homestead staff, as well as some of the guests, would seem to have been diminishing.

Both the larger relief-moulded sets and the very plain white set were likely to have been more everyday sets for all occupants of the homestead complex – members of the OKH household itself as well as the station workers and homestead staff living in and around the homestead. Large dinner plates are most prominent among the three relief-moulded patterns (Tables 5.12–14), constituting nearly 80 per cent of all the vessels in these sets, among which only three serving dishes have been identified. Also, these relief-moulded dinner plates tended to be slightly larger than those in the pre-1890 sets and in the other three more distinctive post-1890 sets. That is, the latter mainly ranged from 9–10 inches, while those in the reliefmoulded sets were generally 9½–10¾ inches. Interestingly, there are also numerous 10-inch soup plates with reliefmoulded patterns, but these patterns are all different from these three main sets (Tables 5.19–22), and these soup plates cannot be clearly dated. This suggests bulk buying

Guests to tea Because all the datable porcelain teawares recorded at OKH can be dated to this specific period, or later, this may also apply to the undatable decorated porcelain teawares, most with floral patterns and some constituting small sets (Table 6.23). Among these decorated teawares were: a gilded purple and green bluebell, possibly ‘tête à tête’, cup and saucer set (Figure 140); a likely sugar bowl decorated with a Geisha Girl pattern (Figure 141), and a gilded and floral decorated porcelain teapot (Figure 142). These particular decorated teawares are very fine, of seemingly elegant shapes, and rather feminine, although the recorded tea-drinking accessories and the recorded cup-and-saucer sets do not match each other. A small and relatively plain fluted bone china set dating from the 1920s was also a seeming fine and elegantly shaped ‘tête à tête’

34 Tinned fish is recorded in the Kinchega Estate invoice books by 1919, but not before 1915. Tinned(?) meat is recorded in the stores journals (Sept. 1915–Dec. 1919) in November 1915.

135

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? tea set (Table 6.12), as was a hexagonal gilded and decaldecorated earthenware teapot datable from 1936 (Figures 114 and 115). These decorated and fluted teawares, and these small sets, were likely to have been the more highly valued among the teawares of this period, particularly if gilded. That such teawares are not clearly identifiable in the estate bookkeeping records, and that they are limited in number and constitute relatively small sets, suggests they may have been purchased by individual households. If the porcelain teawares are indeed datable to this period, they again demonstrate some continuity, or perhaps a reintroduction, of earlier genteel tea-drinking practices at OKH. The apparent daintiness of some of these teawares might be symptomatic of a greater involvement of women in such tea-drinking occasions. Other likely decorated teawares probably purchased during this period include a Willow pattern earthenware set that comprised small, probably bread-and-butter, plates (Table 6.8). As noted in chapter six (p. 71), these plates may have been added to an earlier Willow pattern set, possibly a breakfast set.

(see Table 6.10). The estate bookkeeping records indicate that more expensive teawares, especially the breakfast cups and saucers, were purchased infrequently from G. P. Harris Scarfe and Co. and from the Australian China and Glass Co., but it is not clear what decorative or fabric types these were, or if indeed they would have been purchased for this overseer’s household, rather than the manager’s household at Kars Station. The few visitors who stayed overnight at OKH during this period may have been served tea, perhaps at breakfast, with a Willow pattern set – a common type and one that had been at OKH from its earliest occupancy and may have been added to until at least the 1920s. The small fluted bone china tea set was higher priced than the plainer-shaped bone china teawares (see chapter seven, p. 102), and likely to be for more highly valued overnight guests, such as the Hughes family or other family visitors. This set and the finely decal-decorated porcelain teawares may have been used by the Hayes household, particularly Mrs Hayes, and any probably female guests. Equally, these seemingly more feminine teawares could have been the possessions or purchases of the later overseers’ wives, such as Mrs Phelan or Mrs McLennan. Mrs Phelan may have entertained her sisters, during their visits, with such ‘pretty teasets’.

Besides the likely purchasing of these few, relatively small and seemingly rather elegant tea sets – or perhaps replacements in the case of the Willow pattern set – this period undoubtedly also saw the purchasing of increasing amounts of plain white or ‘white and gold’ bone china and porcelain, and probably a few plain white and ‘white and gold’ earthenware teawares. Bone china teawares with Phoenix, Blair, Gladstone and Colclough marks may all have been purchased during this period, although some of these brands could have been bought at the very end of the preceding period – that is, between 1910 and 1915 (Tables 6.10–11). All the numerous datable Czech and Japanese porcelain teaware vessels were produced and purchased after 1918, and the Colclough bone china teawares were purchased from 1935. As noted in chapter six (p. 87), twice as many ‘white and gold’ porcelain cups, saucers and plates would have been purchased between 1918 and 1955, as were ‘white and gold’ bone china teawares, datable over the whole post-1890 period.

Owen Hayes had commented that lots of people would ‘call in’ for a cup of tea and a rest as they passed by. Most of such visitors were probably more likely to have been offered the ‘white and gold’ or plain white teawares than these ‘pretty teasets’. At the kinds of large social events that took place at Kinchega during the 1920s – cricket matches, concerts and dances – tea may also have been served in these types of teawares, if not the actual teawares recorded at OKH. A number of the unmarked porcelain straight-sided porcelain cups recorded at OKH are rather thick-walled (see Table 6.21 and Figure 137). This possibly implies that these cheaper types of teawares were being used for such occasions, or by homestead staff who may formerly have used tin or enamel vessels. The estate was still supplying enamel cups and plates to their station workers until at least the late 1920s (see Appendix 5), however. While these teawares might indeed have served as such everyday teawares in and around the homestead, the increase in their numbers, at a time when the numbers of homestead staff were probably diminishing, would seem to demonstrate that these teawares also document changes in the nature of social interactions at OKH during this period, with more visitors and less exclusivity in taking tea. It is also evident from both the remains at OKH and the estate bookkeeping records that these types of teawares were added to, possibly continuously throughout this period, by the estate, with probably by this time relatively cheap Czech and Japanese porcelain, rather than English bone china or earthenware, after 1918. The social distinctions of tea-drinking between everyday – for homestead occupants and other station workers – and occasions with certain guests were becoming less marked during this period, which saw more opportunities for less formal and less genteel tea-drinking occasions. That is, everyone at OKH was likely to have been

The evident increase in ‘white and gold’ and plain white teawares after 1918 could be the result of depositional processes. That is, more later vessels on the surface of the household rubbish area (DD). However, as noted in chapter one (p. 3), little material was evident below the surface of the refuse site. Also, the recording strategy actually involved less focus on collecting these plainer ceramics. And, as discussed in chapter seven (p. 100), the estate bookkeeping records indicate that considerable numbers of cups and saucers were being purchased in the 1920s, and seemingly on a regular basis (see Appendix 6). Some were now being purchased from Menindee. While the bookkeeping records only indicate the purchasing of ‘white and gold’ teawares until 1925, as argued in chapter seven (p. 101), this may be because they were no longer being specifically identified in these records, or indicate that the estate was no longer responsible for supplying such teawares. They were certainly still being purchased and used at OKH, as is evident from the Colclough examples 136

Who Would Have Come to Dinner and Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead using ceramic teawares, and those of predominantly similar quality, or value. Also, most, if not all, of the earthenware teapots recorded at OKH date to this period (see Table 6.9). While none of these are particularly large teapots, if used together, the black-glaze teapots, in particular, could have been used for tea parties for quite large gatherings, although of a seemingly lower status than the gilded and decorated porcelain teapot and also the gilded and decaled earthenware teapot mentioned above. Like the decaldecorated cups and saucers, these two teapots, the latter produced in 1936, may have been used for more select and perhaps more feminine tea-drinking occasions. While the ‘white and gold’ teawares might seem to have been for more refined occasions than the plain white teawares, as discussed in chapter six (p. 87), there does not seem to be a typological or chronological separation between these two teawares, with both appearing to have been purchased in similar quantities, probably across much of the post-1890 period, and especially after 1918. Indeed, the Anthony Hordern and Sons Ltd 1909 catalogue refers to ‘white and gold’ earthenware cups and saucers as ‘suitable for restaurant use’ (Anthony Hordern and Sons 1909: 370), implying that these would have been useful for larger, and more frequent, groups of visitors rather than for more refined, smaller groups.

met in towns. Nevertheless, it would no doubt have provided occasions for more social interactions between women in such regions, which, with better transport, may well have led to increasing opportunities for women’s teadrinking gatherings at OKH. Thus, the material record of tablewares and teawares from OKH indicates that, during the period after 1915, when OKH was occupied by overseers, social interaction at this homestead had both increased and broadened its social base. While nineteenth-century middle-class standards of gentility might be less evident in this record, this record seems to document improved standards of living for the homestead staff and other station workers. It is also tempting to see the increase of ‘white and gold’ tea sets after 1918, the bone china teawares datable after 1914 and the seemingly feminine decorated teawares, some datable to the 1930s, as part of a ‘reinvigorated Britishness’ at OKH during these decades. 1940s–1955 This period covers the years from the Second World War until the homestead was abandoned in 1955. The main occupants of OKH were the Beven and Files families. By this stage, as intimated by Peter Beven (pers. comm., phone conversation, 9 Aug. 1998), there were no doubt considerably fewer station workers and homestead staff in and around the homestead than there had been in the earlier part of the twentieth century.

By the end of this period, or possibly in the following period, the occupants of OKH also had two colouredbodied earthenware tea sets – a yellow-bodied Laburnum Petal Grindley set (dating 1936–54) and probably a similarly dated complementary pink-bodied earthenware, each with at least three cups (Table 6.8). While these tea sets were not necessarily exclusive or expensive, they would have been rather fashionable and colourful, providing an up-to-date, and again seemingly rather feminine, tea setting. They suggest that, in the late 1930s and 1940s, there may have been more, possibly female, guests for perhaps still relatively exclusive but probably less formal tea-drinking occasions. However, it seems unlikely that the proximity of the train at Menindee would have brought people to Kinchega just for a cup of tea. These sets may have been used to entertain people, particularly women, from Menindee itself, or from other stations, or overnight guests (travelling by train to Menindee or by motor car), or perhaps just by the homestead occupants themselves to present, on occasion, a slightly higher-status tea-drinking situation than those when ‘white and gold’ or plain white wares would have been used. Essentially, the teawares likely to have been purchased at OKH during this period suggest that occasions for exclusive tea-drinking with fashionable sets were infrequent, as opposed to occasions for less exclusive and larger gatherings with less evidence of social distinction.

Dinner guests None of the tablewares recorded at OKH can be specifically dated to this period as new dinner sets, although replacements for the gilded dark blue-banded, the reliefmoulded, and the plain white circular sets, and for some of the earlier transfer-printed sets – e.g. the Willow and Rhine pattern sets – could conceivably have been purchased during this period. Certainly the bookkeeping records indicate that tablewares, including ‘embossed china plates’, likely to be the relief-moulded plates, were being purchased in 1941, and ‘sweet dishes, Swinnerton’ were purchased in December 1941 (see Appendix 5). Remains of at least two Swinnerton white earthenware relief-moulded bowls recorded at OKH (Table 5.23) are datable to 1946. The only new set likely to have been bought during this period is the smaller blue dyed-body set (Table 5.26), with one plate labelled ‘Swinnerton’ datable from 1946, which was possibly part of a breakfast set. However, this type of set was being made in the 1820s, so it would not have been a particularly fashionable set for this period.

It has been suggested that some of these teawares might serve to document the activities of the Country Women’s Association of Australia (Judy Birmingham, pers. comm., Aug. 2010). This federal organisation was formed in 1945, although the NSW branch was founded in 1922 (see The Australian Women’s Register, The Country Women’s Association of Australia). However, its members usually

This suggests that the Beven and Files households probably continued to use the same types of tablewares as had been used at OKH in previous periods, with replacements being bought possibly by the estate. For the Beven family, at least, this could have reflected straitened circumstances and more restricted market access during the Second World War. As noted above, few visitors stayed at the homestead during the 137

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Bevens’ occupancy. When the Hughes family, or any other ‘Christmas guests’, dined at OKH, they were likely to have dined on either old-fashioned tablewares, or very utilitarian tablewares similar to those used by the estate workers. This would also have applied during the Files’ occupancy in the post-war years. However, the purchase of replacements for what appears to have been a breakfast set after the Second World War suggests that certain standards were still being maintained, with specific if not very fashionable sets for specific meals, perhaps for when the owners visited. Again, though, the seeming plethora of relief-moulded vessels, which were mainly dinner or soup plates, and their purchase by the estate in the 1940s, suggest that most people living at the homestead, and even perhaps most visitors, ate more simply, with less concern for social display.

from 1915–19 coffee is only assigned to ‘men’s rations’. As noted in chapter seven (p. 100 and p. 103), a few coffee pots and coffee cups were listed in the estate bookkeeping records, but the quantities of teawares and of tea purchased were considerably larger than for coffee (see Appendices 6, 7 and 8). Only one small, undatable porcelain ‘demitasse’ handle found in the ‘Chinaman’s hut’ at OKH was possibly from a coffee cup, but seems rather incongruous in this specific location. While many of the cups and saucers recorded at OKH and in the estate bookkeeping records could have been used for drinking coffee as well as tea, the purchase of specific coffee cups in 1939 (see Appendix 6) suggests that coffee was becoming a more fashionable drink on the estate in these latter years. Even if the OKH occupants had previously been buying their own coffee and coffee wares, tea was likely to have been drunk more frequently than coffee within the homestead. The reports of Mrs Gunn and Mrs Wallace (e.g. Wallace n.d.: 8), and the 1915–19 estate stores journals, imply that tea had a higher status than coffee, in earlier years. While Dutch Mrs Delprat served coffee at her dinner parties at Broken Hill in the 1890s (see chapter two, p. 29), the material and documentary evidence for the more British households on the Kinchega Estate suggests very strongly that tea was the main non-alcoholic drink for socialising throughout OKH’s occupancy, whether at mealtimes or in between.

Guests to tea Similarly, with the possible exception of the yellow- and pink-bodied tea sets, which were likely to have been purchased between 1936 and 1955, there would not seem to be any new and fashionable teaware sets purchased during this period. Again, replacements were no doubt purchased, particularly for the ‘white and gold’ and plain white teawares, many of which continued to be made into the 1950s, and still continue to be produced today. The booking-keeping records indicate that ceramic teawares, and also coffee cups and saucers, were being purchased by the estate until at least September 1943. The first, and only, mention of coffee cups in these records was in May 1939 (see Appendix 6), purchased from Antony Hordern and Sons Ltd, in Sydney. While the vessels listed in these invoice books were not necessarily destined for this particular homestead, they perhaps indicate a new concern by the estate generally for specialised vessels for specific beverages and perhaps an increasingly greater role of coffee as a status drink in this context, as discussed below.

Whether tea or coffee, or indeed chocolate, was being drunk at OKH, these beverages seem to have been drunk from relatively large cups. Throughout the life of OKH, most recorded cups are between 3½ and 4 inches in diameter (see tables in chapter six), and so are among the larger sizes for teacups, although they cannot be identified as breakfast cups as no measurements are available for these (see Table 4.2). Interestingly, among specified cups and saucers in the estate invoice books, more are identified as actual breakfast cups and saucers than as teacups and saucers (see chapter seven, p. 100 and Appendix 6). However, most of the specified breakfast cups and saucers were purchased after 1915, and mostly after 1922, perhaps again indicating less refined tea-drinking in the later years.

Apart from these coffee cups and saucers, though, the only new and fashionable tea sets that may have been purchased during this period were the dyed-body pink and yellow tea sets. If so, they would have been purchased by Mrs Beven or Mrs Files as fashionable, feminine sets for taking tea probably with family, friends and neighbours.

Also, like different types of teawares and tea-drinking occasions, not all tea carried the same social status. The tea served at OKH was not necessarily the best-quality tea, certainly once the homestead became an overseers’ residence. As noted in chapter seven (p. 103), the estate store journals (1915–19) indicate that the manager’s house at Kars may have received a better quality of tea than the overseers’ homesteads. This would appear to add a further level of social distinction, with the manager and his guests perhaps having better-quality tea for their more genteel status than the overseers for theirs, at least during the early years of the twentieth century.

Serving tea or coffee at OKH The above discussion has focused on social interactions around dining and tea-drinking. Indeed, in the British colonial tradition (see e.g. Griggs 2002: 283), tea was a more popular drink than coffee throughout Australia for most of its history (see Griggs 2015). As discussed in chapter two (p. 18), by the 1820s, tea was the most preferred non-alcoholic drink in Australia, and from the mid-nineteenth century until Federation, Australia had the highest consumption of tea per capita, being second to Britain only from 1900 until the late 1940s (Griggs 2015: 23, 27, 44). For this reason, this study has focused on teadrinking, although coffee was also drunk on the estate and very probably at OKH. Interestingly, in the stores journals

The place of the OKH occupants in the social hierarchies of western NSW and Australia The previous sections have discussed the changing opportunities for and types of social interaction that are 138

Who Would Have Come to Dinner and Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead witnessed through the archaeological, documentary and oral records for OKH. Analyses from previous chapters have been combined with information on the actual OKH occupants and their visitors to assess for the types of social interaction and changes over time, changes which can be associated as much with social values and aspirations as with transport conditions. This current section attempts to place the foregoing discussion in context, particularly in relation to the types of social interactions, social networking opportunities and social hierarchies discussed in chapters three and eight.

Throughout the late nineteenth century and into the midtwentieth century, even if there were more opportunities for the OKH households to socialise than for other station homesteads in this region, it was still more difficult than in more urban contexts. However, comparisons in chapter eight with the types of tableware and teaware settings at largely nineteenth-century urban and semi-rural sites, such as in Sydney, Port Adelaide and near Melbourne, suggest that the outback context of OKH, even prior to 1890, was not necessarily an obstacle for its occupants to at least aim to maintain appropriate genteel middle-class standards. That some of the earlier tablewares at OKH predated the homestead by several decades, and were not parts of original matching sets, was probably due more to a general lack of availability of new and different sets within Australia in the mid-nineteenth century than to a lack of middle-classness. The numbers of these sets and their complex settings serve to demonstrate that the earliest OKH occupants aspired to entertain to a more genteel standard than most of these comparative sites, even if their table settings were of the types of tablewares found on urban working-class sites.

The estate bookkeeping records suggest that the three main homesteads on the Kinchega Estate were likely to have received a similar range of tableware and teaware vessel types, and that the estate provided these standards for overseers’ and managers’ families. These managers and overseers were often young ‘trainee’ pastoralists who intended to gain experience and amass funds to purchase and run properties of their own (e.g. Arthur Hayes), or who would inherit their family properties (e.g. Harold Hughes). As such, they were mainly members of the Australian middle to upper middle classes.

At least three different managers and their families occupied OKH prior to 1890 (Appendix 10). These households may have brought their own tablewares and teawares with them, although they had to supplement them from time to time, or left them behind for their successors to supplement. The latter scenario seems likely to fit with the Rhine pattern set, which was evidently not a well-matched set, and a common nineteenth-century type. The presence of the relatively common, patterned, pre-1890 sets at OKH and their continued replacements during the early years of the homestead’s occupancy might serve to demonstrate the limited availability of a wider range of possible sets for the pockets of these often young families starting out on their pastoral careers (see Allison 2003: 169–70). Indeed, these table settings demonstrate the efforts made by the first occupants of this homestead – not least in transporting these goods to the outback – to provide genteel dining standards, efforts that were unlikely to have been well rewarded by sufficient visitors to whom to display such apparatus and associated social values. If any of these nineteenth-century tablewares were indeed purchased second hand, or as partial sets, this, and the diversity of vessels within each type, might further demonstrate the significance of maintaining a genteel table setting. Most of the visitors who would have been served with such table settings at OKH would have been men visiting for business purposes, visits that no doubt could lead to improved social networking (especially among pastoralists). However, this region seems unlikely to have been a place to visit for purely social reasons during this period.

OKH was not as remote as most of the other pastoral stations discussed in chapter three (pp. 28–31), so opportunities for social life were seemingly greater at this homestead. Being on the Darling River, the managers’ and overseers’ families living at OKH during the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries would have had fewer logistical difficulties and more opportunities, strategically, for social interaction than Mrs Wallace, Mrs Gunn, or indeed the Reids and Shaws, or Mrs White’s family. The reports from the three pastoralists’ wives, Mrs Wallace, Mrs Gunn and Mrs White, indicate their lack of access to the range and types of ceramics encountered on Australian urban sites, but also the inappropriateness of such apparatus for their particular circumstances. In particular, Mrs Wallace and Mrs Gunn highlight their limited use of and opportunity for elaborate table display. And while Mrs White’s table service included a soup tureen (White 1973: 124), few guests came to this remote homestead. Nevertheless, Mrs White’s table service highlights a desire, even into the 1920s, to maintain genteel table settings with a range of courses, whether or not there were any guests. Her emphasis on a ‘soup tureen’ among her table settings, but her apparent lack of guests to appreciate it, might help to place the large numbers of relatively small dinner services and decorated tea sets at OKH datable prior to 1890 in their social context. These material remains indicate that not only did the occupants of OKH aim to maintain the genteel middle-class standards found at urban centres, and indeed ‘at home’ in Britain, but they were, at first, seemingly unaware of how difficult this maintenance and its display might be. During the early years of its colonisation, this region provided few opportunities for social networking among the types of people whom Russell has referred to as ‘people we know’ (see chapter two, p. 18) who would have been impressed by appropriate manners and etiquette, and would have been participants in dinner and tea parties in urban and semi-rural contexts.

After c.1890, as transport improved, particularly, and more visitors could travel more easily and more regularly in the west Darling region, including female visitors, the types of tablewares and teawares recorded at OKH would seem to have been more fashionable. While the newspaper reports 139

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? around the turn of the century indicate that most social interaction at OKH still involved mainly men visiting for business purposes, this type of documentary evidence may not tell the full story, with such reports mainly by male reporters and focused on pastoral exploits. Indeed, most newspaper reports concerned managers and overseers travelling out from Kinchega, and provide only occasional glimpses of visitors to OKH. Perhaps better insights into the social networking of this period might be found with the Shaws at Yancannia, whose homestead seems to have provided hospitality to a wide range of people at this time. Mrs Delprat also had a busy social life in Broken Hill in the 1890s, even if she sometimes found her company rather odd.

an apparent increase in the numbers of tableware and teaware vessels, but not necessarily in differentiated sets and ranges of table settings, with the majority of these ceramics comprising large, amorphous sets of reliefmoulded tablewares and of ‘white and gold’ and plain white teawares. These tablewares and teawares seem to indicate an increasing democratisation of hospitality at OKH during this period. Reported cricket matches, dances and large social gatherings no doubt involved people from the immediate vicinity, even if some visitors used the improved transport to travel from further afield for such events. These reports suggest that Kinchega often hosted large groups of people, who were likely to have used the many similar, if not exactly matching, tablewares and teawares recorded at OKH. These kinds of social interactions were no doubt less formal, carried less sense of middle-class gentility, and involved more recipients of the homestead occupants’ hospitality than in the earlier years. And the social significance of matching tea sets was diminished. Indeed, the estate records and the finds from OKH also indicate that, as the twentieth century progressed, some of the settings used by the homestead occupants were likely to be similar to those used by shearers and other station workers, demonstrating more egalitarianism, particularly in daily use. As discussed in chapter seven (p. 108), though, these were not the cheapest ceramics available. Despite the apparent institutionalisation of their procurement, the estate could ensure that, during this period, its employees and their guests could present a combination of British respectability with Australian hospitality to a wide range of guests.

Changes such as the introduction of the new Cuba dinner set after 1890, and in the first decades of the twentieth century possibly the 12-sided set, are not necessarily purely a sign of improved transport conditions, not least because inter-household visits for pastoralists during this period were still relatively difficult. These sets imply a change in socio-economic status, or aspirations, at OKH, where previously little would have been spent on household goods and inherited concepts of British gentility would have sufficed. Now, in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, new social values required new and fashionable table settings. As discussed in chapter two (p. 14), links to the Old World for second- and thirdgeneration Australians were being increasingly replaced with a new cultural identity and associated codes of social conduct. After 1901, a ‘new Australian identity was being constructed’, involving greater egalitarianism, with a greater range of types of visitors to outback homesteads, although this did not mean that some of them, at least, were not afforded more refined levels of hospitality, and perhaps ostentatiousness. These brand-new dinner sets, and possibly the appearance of gilded bone china tea sets, imply a more fashionable level of social display in dining and tea-drinking at this homestead. These settings may have been purchased to impress more frequent and more sophisticated visitors, women as well as men. Long visits by female friends and family members, like Miss Grieve in 1909 and possibly Mrs Slade in 1913, indicate that attitudes to this region, as a destination for purely social interaction and social networking, and also a sense of tourism, were changing. Now the OKH occupants could establish their social credentials through the new codes of Australian hospitality, and entertain guests, who included more women, with up-to-date table settings that were comparable to those of their urban and semi-rural cousins. However, the largely Victorian concepts of what constituted genteel and respectable dining and tea-drinking standards that seem to have so impressed Miss Grieve when she visited Tarella Station can be seen to be breaking down and transforming in the next decades of the new century. Thus, the measures used by archaeologists at nineteenth-century sites for assessing social status through tablewares and teawares, as discussed in chapter eight, are less applicable.

The reports of the social life of Mrs Phelan and of visits by her family during the 1930s could be as much a change in journalistic interest as a change in social interactions during this specific period, although the availability of and interest in such news is perhaps significant here. The visits of her family members are reminiscent of Miss Grieve’s travels in the region, and no doubt the visits of guests at the Shaw homestead, and probably Mrs Slade’s to OKH, some decades earlier. What is perhaps noteworthy here, though, is that one of Mrs Phelan’s visitors, the violinist Miss Ruby Macdonald, was likely to have been a professional associate, and perhaps important for Mrs Phelan’s professional, as well as social, networking. It is not certain that Mrs Phelan’s professional life had an impact on the types of tablewares and teawares found at OKH or purchased by the estate that was markedly different from her predecessors, however. To impress her guests, Mrs Phelan is likely to have used seemingly old-fashioned tableware settings, or perhaps the rather institutionalised but apparently privately acquired gilded dark blue-banded dinner set, and the coloured-bodied and delicate gilded and decorated, seemingly feminine tea sets, that may have purveyed a reintroduced Britishness and an associated femininity of tea-drinking. The latter may have been impossible before 1890, and still very difficult in the first decades of the twentieth century. Certainly, though, all OKH occupants during the 1920s and 1930s had more opportunities to entertain guests to dinner and tea than

With further improvements to local transport after the First World War, and in the 1920s and 1930s, OKH witnessed 140

Who Would Have Come to Dinner and Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead did Mrs White during this period, and to display their social values and codes of hospitality in different ways through their different table settings.

After 1915, the downgrading of OKH from a manager’s to an overseer’s residence may have meant less need to display such manners and social codes, at least as far as the estate was concerned. Over the next decade or so, though, with trains to Menindee, first from Adelaide through Broken Hill and then from Sydney, there was considerably greater opportunity for social interaction and social networking at OKH. The tablewares and teawares at OKH that can be dated after 1915, and particularly in the 1920s and 1930s, demonstrate the impact of these two factors on changes to social opportunities and social practices at OKH. By the 1920s, guests were seemingly more numerous, but there was also evidence for a resurgence of what might be considered new forms of gentility and respectability within Australian codes of hospitality. The purchasing of many of these ceramics by the estate indicate that such new codes and values were largely being instigated and supported by the estate, with the evident respectable standards seemingly in line with changes in general democratisation of the wider Australian society, and particularly concerning other workers at Kinchega Station. That is, most people on the station were now drinking their tea from china and porcelain cups, probably with saucers, and eating from relief-moulded dinner wares. However, while betterquality ‘white and gold’ bone china and also porcelain teawares (see chapter six, p. 86) were being used at OKH in the 1930s, it is not clear whether these were still being purchased by the estate or whether the OKH occupants took the greater opportunities to shop locally themselves for household goods that they needed to ensure more than merely respectable table and tea settings. At the same time, the gilded and decorated, feminine tea sets indicated the important, perhaps reinstituted, role of a sense of British gentility in the social world at OKH, now played out by the women in the homestead.

Summary The above discussion provides insights into the roles of the tablewares and teawares at OKH in the social practices of its occupants and their interactions with visitors, and into the ways in which these roles and practices changed over time. Some changes can be ascribed to changes in available transport. However, more generally, they can be ascribed to changing social mores and codes of hospitality, both those of the homestead occupants and those of their employers. Until c.1890, all transport, of people and of goods – by camel and bullock train and by river steamer – was timeconsuming and dominated by unpredictable rains and drought conditions. Visitors were few, and far between, and mainly on business related to pastoralism, or perhaps to the administration of the local region. Some visitors would have been neighbouring pastoralists and possibly their families. All such visitors would have had to stay the night, and some longer. They would no doubt have brought news from the outside world and provided opportunities for the homestead occupants to demonstrate their middleclass Victorian manners and social values. These were demonstrated through table settings for meals – breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner – of relatively traditional fare, with a range of different courses, and served on rather traditional and old-fashioned British tablewares and teawares. After the arrival of the train at Broken Hill in 1888, any visitors would still have to travel probably for at least a day, by bullock wagon, or horse buggy or coach from Broken Hill. While perhaps more frequent and for short periods, such visits would still have been relatively few, limited largely to business trips. Most, if not all, visitors would, again, have had to stay overnight. They would still have been treated to a social display, but with more fashionable fare, served with more up-to-date table settings, some probably purchased by or through the estate. This situation no doubt continued until c.1913, when the motor car was introduced to this region and facilitated, in particular, visits between neighbouring pastoralists (Waterhouse 2005: 36–37).

For the final decades of the occupancy of the OKH, when visitors could travel easily by diesel-electric train from Sydney or Adelaide, the tablewares and teawares recorded there suggest there was less interest in purchasing new and fashionable settings to impress any such visitors, with the possible exception of a yellow- and pink-bodied tea set, and a rather old-fashioned blue-bodied breakfast set that may have been another household rather than estate purchase. There was perhaps less ‘institutionalisation’ of British social practices and values during this period than in the 1920s and 1930s, when cricket matches were taking place at Kinchega Station.

141

10 Concluding Discussion P. Allison This study has addressed questions concerning social behaviour through detailed analyses of artefactual evidence. Mullins argued that ‘most objects occupy a paradoxically intimate yet unexamined position in people’s everyday lives’ yet we ‘struggle to articulate the meaning of the most familiar’ (2014: 105). Here, micro-archaeological analyses of seemingly familiar tablewares and teawares have demonstrated their active role in the production and maintenance of social values and codes, and provide insights into the social practices, and associated display of social mores, of the occupants of this Australian outback pastoral homestead. These insights provide understandings of social behaviour in this particular context that are not always as predictable as might be expected.

relationship. To some extent, this applies to the general nature and impact of trade and communication networks on consumer behaviour across the British world and across the various dominions that provided access to household goods for various regions. For example, nineteenth-century Australia lacked porcellaneous tablewares, including English bone china (Crook 2008: 117, fig. 5.15), and the tableware and teaware remains from OKH appear to reflect this wider Australian situation. However, at this outback homestead the lack of bone china or porcelain tablewares extends into the mid-twentieth century, despite mail order catalogues during the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries providing consumers in such remote areas with information on the same types of goods as were available in urban department stores. An important reason for this difference, and this continuity of preference for earthenware tablewares ceramics, may be socio-economic rather than necessarily related to physical access to available markets, as would seem the case for the pastoral stations studied by Paterson (2011: 258). This observation demonstrates that, contra Lawrence, not all across the British colonial and post-colonial worlds could or did always take advantage of access to the ‘latest of manufactured goods’ (see chapter two, p. 21).

While by no means ‘craft[ing] systematic narrative’ (Mullins 2014: 105), the study has integrated analyses of documentary and oral evidence with these artefactual remains to provide greater depth to our understandings of these social practices in this relatively remote colonial and post-colonial context. These analyses have been driven by the findings made, and the questions arising, through investigation of the artefactual evidence. In the first instance, comparisons of these tableware and teaware remains with items recorded in collectors’ references books, and with those in Australian mail order catalogues, have informed our understandings of how some of the different forms of tableware and teaware vessels found at OKH may have been used. For example, the labels and plate sizes used in these sources for different types of plates (e.g. dinner plates, supper plates and breakfast plates) were critically assessed to help identify the particular occasions for which similar-sized and similar types of OKH plates were likely to have been used and, consequently, the likely types of table settings to which they belonged. More significantly for this study, though, the bookkeeping records of the Kinchega Estate’s purchasing of such goods, oral reports from former occupants and their descendants, and reports in newspapers have constituted interconnected primary source materials pertaining to this particular homestead. The interrogation of these resources through the artefactual evidence has allowed questions concerning comparative access to ceramic markets, consumer choice and the relationships of these factors to the social requirements of outback customers to be explored.

An undoubtedly more significant impact on the specific supply of household goods to OKH was that of local transport conditions. With its river frontage location and proximity to Menindee – which could be reached by train from Broken Hill and Adelaide in the 1890s, and from Sydney at the end of the 1920s – this homestead very probably had greater access to goods, and also to visitors, than homesteads on stations further west. Nevertheless, particularly prior to 1890 and probably until the end of the nineteenth century, despite the availability of mail order catalogues, the OKH occupants would have had considerable difficulty receiving such household goods. Shopping in the west Darling region during these early years was not a simple matter. River transport was sporadic and most was reserved for the transporting of more practical necessities for establishing a pastoral estate and food essentials for its workers (flour, sugar and tea), as well as for taking its produce (livestock and wool) to relevant markets (see Maiden 1989: 25). Fine ceramics were not among these practical necessities. Lawrence argued (2000: 130) that, for nineteenth-century mining sites in Victoria, goods needed to be transportable. Such ceramics were also not easily transportable, as is evident from Mrs Gunn’s two teacups needing to be ‘embedded in a supply of tea’ (Gunn 1964: 92).

The study has highlighted the roles that the transport conditions and access to markets have in the patterns of procurement of these objects over the nearly 80 years in which OKH was occupied, but also the lack of direct 143

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Crook observed that the nineteenth-century ceramic and glassware found on most archaeological sites would have been relatively small expenses for middle-class families, and also for many upper working-class families (2008: 280). In particular, she noted the relatively cheap cost of some of the types of tablewares that we have subsequently recorded at OKH (Crook 2005: 19–20). However, her comments about minimal household expenses do not necessarily apply to OKH if account is taken of the difficulty and associated costs of transporting such apparatus to this remote region. Indeed, the ceramic tableware and teaware remains recorded at OKH demonstrate the investment of considerable labour, and possibly also expense, in the acquisition of such apparatus, much of whose evident purpose was for the display of social values rather than for practical necessity. The desire for such apparatus can be seen to have overcome local transport and market conditions, and associated economic factors. Despite the difficult and sporadic transport conditions in this region prior to 1890, the early occupants of OKH had a seeming plethora of different but matching table settings – and seemingly different sets for breakfast, lunch, dinner and tea. Considerable effort was required to bring these ceramic finewares to their new home. Notable from the analyses in chapters five and six is a discrepancy among these OKH vessels between the date of manufacture of some vessels and their possible dates of use, with some already many decades old before they reached this particular homestead. This discrepancy is verifiable only for the earliest ceramics, but indicates that some vessels, and probably some sets, were likely to have been owned by the OKH occupants before they moved into this homestead, or even into the earlier Kinchega homestead, and indeed before European colonists settled in this region. Many of these sets may have been used for a considerable length of time, both before and after reaching this homestead. The precise origins of such seemingly ‘old-fashioned’ sets are unclear. The two likely possibilities are that they were either heirlooms or bought second hand. The effort required to bring these tablewares and teawares to this location, in these early years, and the apparent lack of a ‘seconds’ market in Australia generally, suggest the former is more probable. This recalls Gray’s emphasis on ceramics as an important inherited item for women (2013: 29; see chapter eight, p. 116). Rather than being considered ‘hand-me-downs’ (Prossor et al. 2012: 815), these old-fashioned ceramics may have been family treasures that had travelled with them into this new and unfamiliar environment, and whose use there may have brought memories of family members now essentially lost (see Lipman 2019: 84). Despite this effort to bring this apparatus to the outback, intended mainly to meet social requirements or social aspirations, it was not driven by prior knowledge of the opportunities for social interaction here. The early table settings at OKH seem to demonstrate levels of genteel performance that, in the end, would have been accommodated largely by dining within the household, perhaps as a mark of self-respect or nostalgia for former lives. Only occasionally could such display be shared with business associates, or with visiting neighbours who lived a good day’s ride away, and who would therefore

have had stay the night and so to have been guests to dinner and breakfast. The relatively large number of rather small matching tea sets in the early years bear witness to social interaction and networking with small numbers of people, but again with a perhaps greater expectation for more such occasions than actually would have taken place. It has been noted that many early tableware sets do not appear to have been purchased as original and complete sets. As discussed in chapter four, matching sets were often an indicator of wealth and status. Less well-matched sets were likely to be more a sign of aspiration (Crook 2008: 233), although, as Gray has argued, matching sets were not actually a ‘necessity’ for genteel households in England until the 1880s (see chapter four, p. 37). Essentially, the numbers of visitors to OKH and the frequencies of their visits, prior to the end of the nineteenth century, were likely to have been limited, and also limited largely, if not exclusively, to men. The relatively small size of both the pre-1890 tableware and teaware sets, compared with later sets at OKH, demonstrates that the homestead occupants no doubt shared their meals with a limited few during this period. The actual types of transfer-printed patterns of the pre-1890 tableware sets were relatively common, and so these patterned sets themselves did not represent a particularly high level of gentility. However, these tableware sets each embraced a relatively wide range of table settings, with a range of different types of vessels in each set to provide a complex table setting. This meant that the homestead occupants would have been able to serve these few visitors with the types of meals and ranges of dishes that would have indicated to them the homestead occupants’ gentility. These relatively closely matched table settings, with their ranges of dishes and courses, would have been employed by the OKH inhabitants to demonstrate to any such visitors the manners and the social codes of Victorian genteel performance, and perhaps to enhance their social and business networks in this region. These manners and codes, together with the dominance of British-manufactured tablewares and teawares at OKH during this period, as elsewhere in Australia, served to reinforce the British Victorian middle-classness of the homestead occupants. From the Kinchega Station manager Thomas Taylor’s comment (see chapter nine, p. 127), it seems improbable that this type of hospitality would have been extended to all who passed through this homestead, or had reason to visit the homestead complex. The seemingly dainty, and perhaps treasured, tea sets were probably reserved for people for whom it would have been important to the homestead occupants that they understood the social messages of these sets and appreciated their social value, above their economic value. Likewise, they may have evoked memories of ‘home’ and associated emotions of nostalgia for former lives in other places with which they associated these table settings and their socio-cultural meanings (see Tarlow 2012: 173–75; Creese 2016: 29). The apparent smallness of each of the tea sets again indicates the lack of opportunity for all but a select few to take tea at OKH in such a manner. The quantity of these small sets reinforces a social, or indeed 144

Concluding Discussion aspirational, need, rather than a functional need (see Barrett 2016: 135) to also provide a variety of different but refined tea settings. While it is conceivable that these small tea sets could have been combined into a large mixed set, as was reportedly done at the Forest Creek diggings (see chapter two, p. 18), such large, combined sets were probably rarely, if ever, required in this pastoral homestead during these early years, as demonstrated in chapter nine.

occupied the homesteads on the Kinchega Pastoral Estate may in part have been orchestrated by the estate. As noted above, the processes by which the occupants of OKH acquired household goods prior to 1890 are not clear, but they were probably very difficult to acquire, and fine table settings for its employees were probably not a priority for the estate at this time. This situation seems to have changed in the early 1890s, from which date it is clear that the estate was providing its homesteads with household goods that included ceramic tablewares and teawares which were not the cheapest available. While these estate-provided settings may not have included the Cuba pattern dinner set, they did include ‘white and gold’ teawares, at first of bone china. This suggests that new social etiquette and hospitality were being ‘institutionalised’ by the owners of Kinchega Estate for the households of its managers. That is, the estate was purchasing social values, and social mores, for their employees, some of whom were their relatives and descendants, but most not. Some of the main guests at OKH may well have been the estate owners and trustees, for whom these social codes would have been important, and by the use of which the homestead occupants could demonstrate their own manners and social values.

Circumstances changed, though, as improved transport – firstly the train line reaching Menindee from Broken Hill in the 1890s, then the introduction of the motor car in the 1910s, and then rail from Sydney at Menindee at the end of the 1920s – provided greater opportunities for social interaction at OKH, and with a wider range of people. These people would have again included other pastoralists and business associates, but also family and friends from further afield. And people from local communities such as Broken Hill and Menindee also had potentially greater opportunities to visit the homestead. At first, such visits and visitors would have continued to be relatively limited. However, the OKH tablewares and teawares indicate that the codes of etiquette and hospitality were changing. As noted in chapter two, p. 16, the first publication on British etiquette that was exclusively for the Australian market, and largely aimed at women readers, appeared in 1886 as a wider segment of Australian society was becoming essentially middle class. About this time, changes are evident among the OKH tablewares and teawares, with a brand-new, probably fashionable and relatively rare, dinner set (of Cuba pattern). Also, shortly after this date, new types of teawares (e.g. ‘white and gold’ bone china) were beginning to appear at OKH. The Cuba pattern dinner set, at least, shows a marked break from the very traditional, conservative, easily replaceable and secure nineteenth-century British tablewares. This set may also demonstrate a break from traditional English cooking practices, with the introduction of numerous soup plates. At the same time, though, this fashionable dinner set and the rather incongruous focus on soup in this outback pastoral context point to an attempt to keep up to date with the later nineteenth-century British fashion of adopting French cuisine. These changes in diet and table settings can be taken as signs of the OKH occupants still adhering to British social mores, but adapting to the more international milieu at the end of the nineteenth century (see chapter two, p. 15 and chapter nine, p. 132–133). These new tablewares and teawares might also show a new confidence among the OKH occupants in their social status that was less traditionally British. The likely more frequent visitors to OKH may have been treated to more evidently Australian codes of etiquette, and also to the ‘open-handed hospitality’ of the squatter (Donald 1912, cited by Russell 2010: 356–57 – see chapter two, p. 22) that was symptomatic of such new, more democratic, codes.

Newspaper reports in the first decades of the twentieth century indicate that, with improved train travel, if not at first improved travel beyond distant rail heads, social visitors to OKH from urban centres, such as Mrs Slade, were more common. This would have been particularly the case with the advent of the motor car. The tableware sets at OKH possibly datable to these decades include a further fashionable, if rather inexpensive, set (i.e. the 12-sided set), that may have impressed such overnight, more urban, guests with the up-to-date setting it provided, and with still relatively genteel dining standards in terms of the range of courses. Other tablewares that could conceivably have been in use before the First World War, before the homestead became the residence of overseers and their families, were the more formal gilded and dark blued-banded one with a relatively wide range of vessel types, although most datable after 1925, and the more extensive relief-moulded sets but with a more limited range of types of vessels. While these sets may have been brought first in the pre-First World War years, they continued to be added to over the next three decades. With the exception of a small number of decal-decorated and hand-painted teaware vessels, most of which could not be identified as sets (see Tables 6.23 and 6.26), new tea sets during this period seem to be simple ‘white and gold’ or plain sets, in bone china, and possibly earthenware, which were rather institutional in type (see Myers 2016), and were indeed ‘institutionalised’ by being purchased by the estate. These large, relatively plain, tea sets suggest a move away from the Victorian concept of exclusive and genteel afternoon teas, with dainty patterned tea sets, to a more egalitarian approach to tea-drinking among the homestead occupants and their guests, but, with gilded teawares that still maintained a sense of refinement. During this period, as is evident from the invitation by

From the records of the tablewares and teawares purchased by the Kinchega Estate from c.1895, it is apparent that this new confidence among the managers’ families who 145

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Mr Carter to the ‘special reporter’ and perhaps the cricket matches held at Kinchega, there was a move from formal nineteenth-century Victorian codes of etiquette to more casual Australian codes which now adhered to seemingly less discriminating forms of hospitality which also constituted more casual types of social interaction. As well as plainer and less delicate teawares with which to serve tea to such visitors, the large and amorphous relief-moulded tableware set, which is seemingly rather large for the homestead occupants themselves, may have sufficed for providing meals for some of the new types of homestead visitors. These tableware sets that may have been bought during this period appear to have all been dinner settings, perhaps doubling indistinguishably as lunch settings. These settings signal less concern for varied table settings for the different eating occasions than in previous decades, and again seeming reduction in concern for such Victorian etiquette.

middle-class dining and tea-drinking standards. While the gilded dark blue-banded, British-made set may have originally been purchased in 1912, substantial additions were made to it during the 1920s and 1930s. This gilded set was relatively complex but also relatively inexpensive, but was likely to have been used by the homestead occupants to maintain certain social standards, at least for their guests. This set is not identifiable as an Estate purchase, but seemingly a set that was institutionalised by the changing OKH occupants themselves. With such a gilded set they could perhaps display renewed British loyalty in terms of social practice, although, as discussed in chapter five (p. 52), this set may have been a ‘Federal’ pattern set that would seem to express an Australianness (see Cremin and Allison 2006: 53). Additions were also made to the Willow pattern set in the 1920s, either for continued use from an earlier period, or reintroduction of what may have been a separate breakfast set.

The period of the aftermath of the First World War and into 1920s and 1930s may have been a high point for socialising at OKH. As recorded by Owen Hayes in his diary (see chapter nine, p. 136), guests during this period were likely to have been more numerous and more frequent than in previous periods. During this period, as well as British earthenwares and bone china, first Czech porcelain teawares and then Japanese earthenware tablewares and porcelain teawares were being used by the OKH occupants. As argued by Marjorie Graham (2006: 2), this was an Empire-wide phenomenon. Reasons for the choice of these cheaper and plainer ceramics, probably by the estate, were likely to be more economic than sociocultural. As noted in chapter seven (pp. 101–102), though, the porcelain teawares used at OKH during this period were not the cheapest teawares available. The estate was still concerned to maintain reasonable standards through these tea settings for the OKH occupants and their guests. These tea settings were no doubt enjoyed by an even greater range of visitors who ‘called in’, or attended more public events at Kinchega, such as dances, concerts and more cricket matches. It was perhaps for these casual, and for more public, social occasions that the estate sought to ensure that the teawares used were of a suitable standard, which could be maintained with increasingly less costly gilded teawares. While individual overseers’ wives may have presided over such occasions, they were not left to provide the apparatus for them. However, it is perhaps notable that no such durable goods were included in the estate’s store’s journal (Sept. 1915–Dec. 1919). The estate may have provided its managers’ and overseers’ households directly with the types of tablewares and teawares that the owners considered would have set appropriate dining and tea-drinking standards to meet the needs for increasing hospitality, but which lacked much individuality of choice by the homestead occupants.

A distinction between the table settings of the homestead occupants and other station workers becomes increasingly less evident over these and the following decades, and again in large part orchestrated by the estate. The reliefmoulded British and Japanese tablewares recorded at OKH that would have been continuously purchased after 1910 appear to be identifiable among those recorded in the estate bookkeeping records as being purchased until at least 1941 (see Appendix 5). These relief-moulded tablewares – the extensiveness of this set but limited range of vessel types – demonstrate increasingly less formal dining practices at OKH among the homestead occupants, and also dining with probably a greater range of visitors. In the 1940s, those who dined on these tablewares, whether homestead occupants or their visitors, may have dined on a similar table service to the shearers. These relief-moulded dinner settings, in particular, but also the relatively amorphous and interchangeable ‘white and gold’ and plain teawares, bear witness to increasing egalitarianism among overseers and other employees at Kinchega Station. As noted in chapter nine (p. 138), a possible increase in the purchase of breakfast-sized cups by the estate may also represent a move to less refined and more egalitarian tea-drinking. On the other hand, if the Swinnerton blue dyed-body vessels were part of a rather old-fashioned breakfast set purchased, in part at least, in the 1940s, this set indicates some continuity in social distinctions between meals, and perhaps some continued adherence to British social codes for overnight guests. The changes noted in the OKH assemblage after the first decade of the twentieth century may be related, to some extent, to the downgrading of the homestead from a manager’s family residence to an overseer’s family residence. An important question, here, is: to what extent can the tablewares and teawares recorded throughout the life of OKH’s occupancy be compared with other Australian households to improve our understanding of changing social conditions in such outback contexts and in contemporary Australia generally, and to what extent are they more specific to this particular, specific homestead?

That said, there are a number of tablewares and teawares that were probably purchased in the 1920s and 1930s that indicate some discrimination among the homestead guests, that could indeed be considered to hark back to more British 146

Concluding Discussion However, the nature of available information means that such comparisons are really only possible for the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century.

than they had after 1890. Despite the greater number of sets in the earlier phase, though, the substantial majority of the teawares recorded at OKH probably date after 1890 – 68 per cent of definitely datable vessels and over 85 per cent of all identifiable teawares – even though the number of residents of the homestead complex would probably have been reduced, particularly after the First World War. These teawares and the number of tea sets provide the clearest indication of changing social mores throughout the occupancy of the homestead. The comparative numbers between the tableware and teaware sets bear witness to the social distinction between being invited to dine or to take tea, which was also demonstrated by the comparative analyses of other nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australian sites, as discussed in chapter eight. At OKH, though, there are probably other factors at play. The large numbers of small tea sets in the earlier period demonstrate the aspiration for opportunities for genteel performance around tea-drinking, which were probably more limited than anticipated, by occupants who had undoubtedly participated in such social events in more urban spheres before moving to Kinchega. Therefore, any such occasions at the homestead needed to be fully exploited to ensure social status. Such tea sets no doubt evoked, for both hosts and guests, memories of past social lives with now geographically distant relatives and friends, and associated emotions surrounding their absences in this new environment. After 1890, and particularly in the twentieth century, despite more visitors, among whom were probably more women with whom to share similar social codes, such demonstrations of gentility, and such nostalgia, were becoming progressively less important at OKH.

Comparisons between Mrs Wallace’s report and the pre-1890 assemblages at OKH demonstrate that there were considerable changes to opportunities for social interaction in the west Darling region from the third to the final quarter of the nineteenth century, even if at first these assemblages demonstrate aspirational attitudes rather than actual opportunities. Mary Shaw’s history of Yancannia Station indicates that life at Yancannia had been relatively isolated until at least the 1880s, but that, by the end of the nineteenth century, the Yancannia homestead was full of a wide range of guests. Miss Grieve’s diary of her visit to the ‘Corner Country’ demonstrates that, by the turn of the century, while the journey was still arduous, it was more fashionable for visitors other than family members to travel around the west Darling region for purely touristic and social reasons. For Mrs Gunn and Mrs White, in even more isolated locations, though, opportunities for social interaction were considerably more limited, even into the 1920s for Mrs White. Thus, the reports of these women reflect and reaffirm, in a broad sense, the types of social practices and codes of hospitality and the changing conditions for outback pastoral households identified through the tablewares and teawares at OKH, and also the newspaper and oral information about the homestead’s occupants and visitors. They also demonstrate the differing impact of different levels of isolation on such social opportunities. In addition, they intimate the roles played by what were probably broader concepts of social values and social hierarchies. For example, the Shaws owned Yancannia, while the Whites were managers on Sidney Kidman’s very remote Lake Elder Station. However, although the occupants of OKH were managers and overseers, their ceramic remains demonstrate that their contemporary social lives would have reflected those of the Shaws at Yancannia more closely than Mrs White’s at Lake Elder Station.

Investigating social behaviour in historical archaeology As discussed in chapter one, since the 1980s archaeologists have been increasingly concerned with ‘foregrounding things and decentring the human’ for an ‘entangled perspective’ on past human behaviour (Hodder and Lucas 2017: 122). However, Assaf Nativ has recently argued that archaeology is an ambiguous field within the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities (2018a: 5), in which the ‘archaeological’ is an ill-defined, asocial, cultural phenomenon that we seek to ‘mobilize … in order to gain better access to other matters (the past, society, human behaviour) … without fully appreciating the quality of access’ to such matters through the archaeological (2018a: 2). The archaeological, Nativ argues, can be seen as a ‘reduced cultural phenomenon (lacking people and movement) [but] an expanded natural one … residing somewhere [in] between’, and ‘disengag[ed] from society’ through its burial (2018a: 4). He further argues that the ‘archaeological and the social are distinct nodes of being, with the archaeological constituting a ‘withdrawal from the social kinetics’ (Nativ 2018a: 11, 13–14). The archaeological is not a ‘mere derivative of the social’ but ‘a counterpart to the social’ (Nativ 2018a: 17). In his response to Nativ, Gavin Lucas acknowledges the difference between the archaeological as the ‘object of analysis’ and the human

Throughout its history, the occupants of OKH were choosing, or being assigned, tablewares and teawares in patterns and fabrics that, while relatively common and easily added to or replaced – with the possible exception of the Cuba pattern set – were not the most inexpensive. In this regard, the homestead occupants were able to maintain appropriate middle-class standards which were higher than the standards in many middle-class rural contexts closer to urban centres. However, there was likely to have been a time lag, related to both social status and transport opportunities. While the Martins at Viewbank had some relatively high-quality, fashionable (see Hayes 2014a: esp. 67) dinner settings and some limited bone china tablewares prior to 1874, the occupants of OKH did not acquire an above ordinary, seemingly more genteel, dinner set until after 1890. It is notable that, prior to 1890, the occupants of OKH had more teaware sets than dinner sets, and also more tea sets 147

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? past as the ‘object of interest’ (2018: 22), but argues against Nativ’s sharp separation of these into two ontologically distinct realms. He argues that the two can be ‘collapsed and brought closer together’, although not with one as ‘the instrument to access the other’ (Lucas 2018: 24). He emphasises the ‘redemptive role of archaeology’ and the need to be constantly thinking about archaeological objectives, and about our own definitions of the social (Lucas 2018: 24–25). Oliver Harris (2018) further argues that Nativ’s dichotomy does not take account of archaeology as a process and the fundamental purposes of archaeology to answer questions concerning society and human behaviour.

used a singularised approach to the latter to interrogate its relationships with the varying types of the former. The more general, and often analogical, documentary sources used in this study, such as the diaries and reports of people in comparable circumstances and the trade catalogues for the Australia-wide distribution of tablewares and teawares, have helped to provide a background to the likely material conditions and social practices in this particular context, but do not prescribe either. The more specific documentary sources, the estate bookkeeping records, have provided details on the actual goods that reached this pastoral estate, although they cannot be seen to provide precise documentation on the archaeological finds at OKH. Some newspaper reports provide generalised information on opportunities for social interaction in this region, but others have provided more specific information on actual guests and the dates of their visits to Kinchega. Similarly, oral reports have provided information on the social lives of some occupants of this homestead pertaining to specific memories and specific concerns (see Allison 2014), but cannot be used to generalise about social practice across the lifetime of the homestead. Thus, even these more specific records have needed to be used circumspectly as information on social practices across the lifetime of OKH. Here, as noted above, this study has taken a specifically material approach, with the analyses of these other types of evidence instigated to address questions that have arisen through investigation of the archaeological. To justify archaeology in historic periods this is a crucial approach.

The archaeology of the more recent past serves as an ideal sub-discipline in which to assess Nativ’s claims of the exclusivity of the archaeological, problems associated with its conflation with other narratives (Nativ 2018a: 8, 20), and the relational nature of the designations of ‘archaeological’ and ‘social’ (see Nativ 2018b: 39). Nativ argued that, while new materialism seeks to redefine the binary Nature/Culture construct and replace it with theories of entanglements and networks, archaeology is set apart here because of the ‘absence of active human agents’ (2018a: 6–10). The archaeology of historical periods, while having greater access to such ‘active human agents’ than the archaeology of prehistoric periods, can also seek to avoid ‘conflation’ with other, historical, narratives. It can provide greater opportunities to develop archaeological processes and the approaches of new materialism to ‘[cut] through established dichotomies between matter and meaning or culture and the social’ (Schouwenburg 2105: 59). However, while these human agents can often be accessed through documentary records and sometimes oral sources, as Mullins has argued, premature conflation of these sources, and their associated narratives, can cause ‘archaeological things’ to have ‘social meanings projected onto [them]’ (2014: 108). This conflation often results in analogical, even contestable, relationships between these different things (e.g. material objects and texts) that can subvert archaeology’s contribution to understandings of past human behaviour. This is potentially the case for the ‘archaeological’ at OKH, in that many of the narratives developed through the documentary, and oral, sources and used in Australian historical archaeology for some generalised concept of past social behaviour in colonial Australia serve to normalise how the archaeology of OKH can inform on social behaviour in this distinctive context. However, for this particular study, other more specifically contextualised documentary and oral records have been investigated to bring this archaeological evidence closer to a representation of past behaviour without undue conflation or compromise of the archaeological.

The study’s singularised approach to artefactual evidence to investigate social behaviour focuses on ceramics. Its detailed assessments of vessel remains, their assemblages and their associations, potentially provide new dimensions to using ceramics for greater understandings of social practices. Somewhat counter-intuitively though, because of their sheer quantities in archaeology, ceramics have often received limited attention in this regard (see e.g. Allison et al. 2018). This is perhaps less the case in historical archaeology, but socially oriented approaches to ceramics have generally been rather selective in the aspects of these remains chosen for assessment, and in the types of analyses carried out and presented, as is evidenced in chapter eight. For more fully comprehensive and comparative consumption-oriented approaches, more accessible information is needed. This study has used rather traditional approaches to establish the dates and chronologies of the OKH tablewares and teawares. That is, comparisons among the types of ceramic fabrics and decoration recorded and studied at other archaeological sites, in Australia and in North America, have been made to this end. Such comparative studies have been useful for the nineteenth-century ceramics from OKH, but less so for the twentieth-century ceramics, for which there is little comparable study in Australia, or indeed elsewhere in the British colonial world.

As noted at the outset of this concluding chapter, this study has taken a micro-archaeological, artefact-based, approach to past social behaviour that has driven the documentary and oral research, not vice versa. That is, rather than using the documentary and oral evidence to conflate with interpretation of the artefactual evidence, this study has

Potters’ marks, which have been useful to date both the nineteenth- and twentieth-century OKH ceramics, have 148

Concluding Discussion traditionally been a defining feature in the classification of finewares in much of historical, and also classical, archaeology whose objective has been to identify their production and patterns of distribution and trade (Allison 2018). However, as can be demonstrated by this study, in particular by the gilded dark blue-banded dinner set and many of the ‘white and gold’ and plain white teawares recorded at OKH, makers’ marks would not have been uppermost in the minds of these consumers in their choice of vessel types, and so are less important for investigating social behaviour, beyond providing a chronological framework. This investigation has attempted to include detailed examination of all aspects of each vessel fragment recorded at OKH and its archaeological assemblage. That is, we have analysed the fabrics, decoration and markers’ marks, but then focused on the vessel form of each of these fragments, and the quantities of vessels in each fabric and decorative type and from each producer. More importantly, to evaluate the contexts of use for each vessel, this study has taken a more detailed approach to the ranges of types of vessels, to the vessel assemblages, and to the sets of tablewares and teawares that could be identified, than has been done for the comparable sites discussed in chapter eight. In addition, we have collated this artefact collection according to individual vessel morphology as well as to the relative sizes and shapes within each morphological type and within the variously identified sets – for example, the sizes of plates and the ranges of sizes within each identified tableware set (see chapters five and six and Appendices 2–4). To collate tableware sets at the Port Adelaide sites, Briggs (2005) had ascribed vessel names to various plates, thereby assigning them a function. However, as discussed in chapter four (p. 37), vessel names were not used consistently across the respective potteries to define the specifically sized plates they had produced. Indeed, ascribing names to artefacts from archaeological contexts, from the outset, is a conflation that gives primacy to the documentary over the archaeological record, and can be problematic when assessing the actual use of these artefacts (see Allison 1999; 2017). Rather than focusing on ascribing labels and specific vessel function, this study has first used the vessel morphologies, sizes and shapes as the bases for analyses of the types of assemblages and sets, noting that the vessel sizes could change over time and do not always concur precisely with documented sizes. The study has also used vessel profiles as a means for dating vessels, especially plates, and for assessing the origins of manufacture and associated procurement processes. In addition, similarities and differences among vessel profiles have been used to assess the types of sets which such vessels would have comprised – i.e. matched or complementary. As well as being important criteria for assigning plates to tableware sets, profiles were significant criteria in the analyses of the post-1890 ‘white and gold’ and plain white teawares. That is, the profiles of some of these cups and saucers have helped us establish associations among these numerous teawares, and concepts of tea sets, often irrespective of whether they were plain white or ‘white and gold’, and also the potential relative costs and therefore likely social values of some of these sets.

One assumption concerning the socio-cultural significance of table settings in this and other studies investigated in chapter eight is that the value placed on matching sets of tablewares and teawares was a British, late Victorian, concept (see discussion in chapter four, p. 42). Brooks (2003), Yentsch (2011) and Garver (2015) did not mention the existence, or not, of sets, matching or otherwise, among the ceramics recorded at the sites they discussed. Without this information on the ceramics from these sites, it is difficult to ascertain the extent to which these British ceramics in these seemingly non-British contexts could be considered criteria for assessing levels of adopted Britishness, or evidence for the internationalisation of the distribution of such goods. That is, these studies focused on the procurement rather than the social practices associated with the actual use of these ceramics. More details on the precise compositions of these assemblages would have provided more information on how these vessels were used and perhaps helped to substantiate the adoption, or otherwise, of British codes of social behaviour at these particular sites. Detailed analyses of individual vessels as well as of their sets can provide information on social practice, rather than merely on the purchase of such vessels. For example, at OKH the seemingly plainest white earthenware tableware set had matching serving dishes with moulded handles, and a considerable range of plate sizes (see Table 5.25), indicating that it provided for a relatively diverse table setting, at least some of which, including two serving dishes, date after 1912. Such an undecorated set in this fabric might seem rather utilitarian and cheap, and may not have impressed certain visitors to OKH. However, it would have provided self-respectful dining practices for the occupants of OKH for family meals, perhaps for teaching children good table manners. Alternatively, or in addition, it may have served to demonstrate good manners and to provide an appropriate standard of hospitality to visitors to the homestead for whom more ostentatious display was considered less important at this stage. Also evident from this singularised approach to these ceramic vessels is that changes in types of vessels and settings often related more to fashion and social codes than to actual diet and nutrition, although some such changes might indeed indicate changes in dietary fashions (e.g. soup plates). Meat may have been considered a ‘nutritional mark of status’ across the British colonial world at the turn of the twentieth century (see chapter nine, p. 133). However, E. Gwynne Hughes reported (pers. comm., fax, 14 Oct. 1998) that mutton was a major part of the diet at OKH, throughout its occupancy. Nevertheless, when it was likely to have been the most important staple food at OKH, and the diet very restricted, the table settings were the most varied, in accordance with nineteenth-century British middle-class etiquette and the accompanying fashion for a complex range of courses. As greater opportunities were provided for a more varied diet in the twentieth century, the table settings, and probably range of courses, became conversely more restricted. Greater attention in 149

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? archaeology to the relationship between diet and apparatus for eating and drinking can provide greater understandings of socio-cultural practices and social behaviour.

collect and collate this material. It was only through this collection and collation that the potential of this data set for further socially oriented analyses was realised. That is, it was only through the initial analyses of these ceramic remains (Allison and Cremin 2006) that it became apparent that their reanalyses was likely to be fruitful in terms of the contribution these remains could make to our understanding of social behaviour in outback Australia. This situation is applicable to many such archaeological projects and their data sets.

This study includes investigation of a later period than is normal in historical archaeology. It introduces to Australian historical archaeology, and to post-medieval archaeology more broadly, artefact analyses that cover a period extending into the middle of the twentieth century. The latest ceramics in this study are now over six decades old. However, archaeological investigation and classification of the types of twentieth-century ceramics presented and discussed in this study are limited. As noted, the majority of the ceramics included in this study are not included in Brooks’ important guide to British ceramics in Australia (2005). The study, therefore, provides unique information on social behaviour in this particular context during a period when social behaviour in other contexts is better documented. It also constitutes a unique archaeological record and useful approaches for further investigations of twentieth-century ceramics, the changing costs and values of certain types of fabrics and decoration, and the place of these ceramics in socio-cultural histories of Australia, and elsewhere in British colonial and post-colonial worlds.

A further limitation resulted from the artefact recording of this collection for reanalysis – as a student training programme and with the requirements of the research permit for a timely return of the actual artefacts to the Kinchega National Park – when further initially unanticipated questions arose through this reanalysis. This limitation was that the collection was not systematically assessed for evidence of manufacturing flaws. Flaws that were identified only came to light in examining the resulting photographs of some of these ceramic fragments, after the artefacts had been returned for storage. As discussed by Crook (2008: 179–98), more careful recording of the execution of the decorative patterns and of evidence for other manufacturing flaws across a whole collection may provide greater insights into the relative social value of its various sets. At OKH, however, across some 400 photographs of the tableware and teaware fragments from OKH, only a small number of fragments showed obvious evidence of flaws, mainly in the execution of their decoration, but also in the fabric (for descriptions of eight of these fragments see chapter seven, p. 105). All but one of these flaws were on teawares, and four of the vessels with such flaws were not parts of identified sets. It therefore seems improbable, although still possible, that there were numerous flaws among this ceramic collection. This conclusion is supported by the likely difficulty for the OKH occupants in directly acquiring the types of ‘seconds’ that would have had such flaws.

This study may also be seen to throw into question further recent attitudes to artefacts and their social meaning. Hodder and Lucas argue (2017: 137) that ‘elites may often be more entangled [with objects] than non-elites in that they accumulate more things and more relations between things’. However, their arguments do not take into account the seemingly greater entanglement of the occupants of this homestead with these objects prior to 1890 that was not necessarily related to their eliteness. Rather, their entanglement can be seen as a combination of aspirations of elite social status and, perhaps surprisingly an actual lack of immediate access to the ‘world of goods’ (Douglas and Isherwood 1996) which had formerly been more accessible to them. This study demonstrates that the chronological relationship between the manufacture and use of objects can change the nature of this entanglement and its assumption about its social significance (see Lipman 2019). Some objects were important for the homestead occupants’ memories of other social occasions rather than necessarily actually being part of them in their current circumstances. In this specific ecological and industrial context, the social value of these ceramics can be seen to have been heightened, demonstrating geographical and chronological ‘fluid shifts in meaning’ (see chapter one, p. 8).

A particular limitation, and indeed frustration, for the aims of this study has been the difficulty in finding comparable, published data sets for inter-site comparison that have been comprehensively and consistently collected, collated and analysed. In 1985, Dyson (1985: 2) had called for archaeologists of historical periods to ‘break with parochialism and develop a discipline of comparative archaeology’, a call for which Lawrence has more recently lamented (2003c: 28) that ‘an absence of a significant body of material in core areas’ is still a problem. Here, Lawrence lamented the absence of appropriate material to investigate the differences between the place of the 13 colonies of the later United States in relation to British imperial culture, and of Britain’s relationship with its dominions of Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and a need to heed the differences in ideas about ‘Georgianization’, ‘Anglo culture’, class structure and ‘a global perspective on British culture’. Lawrence (2003b: 29) called for ‘further documentation … of all forms of material culture in order to chart the development of

In terms of its recording and analytical approaches, this study is not without its limitations. The initial limitation is that the sampling strategies adopted for artefact collection from the extensive remains at the homestead refuse area in 2002, while designed for a consumption-oriented approach, were not specifically designed for the questions that have arisen as this study has progressed. These strategies were considered appropriate for the initial research design of this project, and for the time and resources available to 150

Concluding Discussion hybrid societies that emerged as Britons, other migrants and indigenous people interacted’, and argued that ‘richer understandings of individual cultures’ would provide great potential for global comparison. As outlined in chapter two (p. 21), Beaudry also argued for the usefulness of material culture for exposing variation in Britain and its dominions. In this study, the material signatures of social practices serve to demonstrate changing social values in one of these dominions, but also how these social values and their enactment can differ, not only from other parts of the British world, but also in a particular context within one dominion. However, there is still a lack of useful comparative material for using this more local and singular analysis for greater contributions to metanarratives about various groups within this dominion, or across the British dominions. With its focus on a narrow social group and detailed analyses of some of the most British of their extant things, and its inclusion of a relatively modern time period, this study can set benchmarks for further studies across differing levels of comparison. As noted by Lawrence, this can apply to comparative studies that include British material culture at home, and ‘the roles played by class and region’ (see also Prossor et al. 2012: 818). Not being concerned with a core area of the British colonial world, but investigating a representative of a significant social group within Australian society, that of pastoralists, these analyses can serve as a valuable case study for comparison with other Australian colonial and post-colonial social and geographical contexts, through their most essential sociocultural practices – those of eating and drinking.

analysed in chapter eight (see p. 117)? Large gatherings in Bean’s Parsonage and in the main house at Viewbank could account for the high percentages of dinner plates calculated for these contexts (see Table 8.1), rather than relatively low dining standards. Equally, the smallest percentage of plates in the pre-1890 OKH assemblage, if not a result of the recording strategy, could be related to smaller gatherings because of a lack of guests to dinner, rather than essentially more elaborate table settings. Also, is the percentage of cups over saucers a reliable sign of levels of respectability? As mentioned in chapter eight (p. 118), we might expect higher frequency of breakages among cups than saucers, which would tend to strengthen the argument that more saucers were discarded, where in fact more were in use. However, we may not have a full understanding of the uses of saucers in this context. Mrs Gunn (1964: 251) commented on a practice among station workers at Elsey Station of using saucers to drink hop beer from, or to keep flies out of the tea. So, while such types of comparative quantitative analyses of ceramics have potential to provide information on social practices, considerable understanding of their specific contexts of use is needed to interpret the results of such analyses. Another potential problem here is the concern of this study, and most archaeological studies, with broken ceramics that have been left behind. As discussed in chapter six (p. 90), we cannot exclude the possibility that more highly valued ceramics were not so quickly broken, and, perhaps along with silver tea services, may have been taken by the OKH occupants to their next home. That said, the lack of any traces of such ceramics among the OKH remains (e.g. bone china tablewares), compared with at Viewbank, suggests they did not exist.

A lack of comparative well-collated data for investigating diversity of social practices among different groups, at whatever scale, is not only a problem for archaeological sites in Australia, or in the British colonial world, but also for archaeology more broadly. For example, as argued for Roman tablewares (Allison 2018; van Helden et al. 2018; Tyukin et al. 2018), more holistic, standardised, detailed and ‘singularized’ collation and recording of ceramic remains at individual sites can have substantial benefits for more socially oriented approaches to the investigation of these types of artefacts and their diverse uses across these sites. The current study, combined with the investigations of the Big Data on the Roman Table network (see Allison et al. 2018), as well as Martin Pitts’ comparative analyses of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century importation of Chinese porcelain into Europe and of Roman finewares in Britain, ‘highlight[s] parallels and contrasts in processes of change’ (Pitts 2013; 2015) and demonstrates that much can be learnt through comparing approaches, not only among different regions and contexts within the British colonial world (see also Brooks 2003: esp. 127; Symonds 2003), but also across different branches of archaeology.

An important lacuna, identified at the outset of this study, is that we have not been able to address the place of Aboriginal people among social practices and social hierarchies identified at OKH. These people, who we know played important roles on Australian pastoral stations, including in the households of pastoral homesteads, were likely to have come into contact with these types of tablewares and teawares and to have used them. Matthew Johnson (2003: 22) has argued that ‘archaeologists look for the clash of cultures, the creation and re-negotiation of identities’. The ceramics discussed here helped the European occupants of OKH ‘re-negotiate their identities’ in this new and often very foreign environment. The archaeological evidence at OKH indicates that Aboriginal people were living in close proximity to OKH probably until at least the 1920s (Rainbird et al. n.d. 46–54; Allison n.d. 2: 15; see also Freeman 2002, vol. 1: 37). It seems eminently plausible that these Aboriginal people – men, women and possibly children – and particularly those working around the homestead, would have also made use of these symbols of Britishness, or indeed internationalism, to re-negotiate their own identities in their now much changed environment. However, we cannot substantiate this view, without more attention across Australian archaeology to assemblages of artefacts, including

Another difficulty for inter-site comparative analyses of social practice is the difficulty in establishing appropriate and informative, quantitative and qualitative, analytical methods and their significance. For example, how useful are comparative studies of the relative percentages of dinner plates among the sets at each comparative site 151

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? European artefacts and particularly ceramics, that made up the cultural assemblages of Aboriginal, non-Aboriginal and combined sites, within the conceptual framework of hybridity and bricolage, as advocated by Russell (2016: 50; see also Paterson 2011: 255). Such attention can lead to greater understandings of how such cultural ‘realities’ were constituted (see Johnson 2003: 22).

insights into the changing nature of the social interactions and associated networking that took place at OKH. Also significant for this specific homestead is that its occupants were not the ‘squatters’ themselves but their employees, and also their heirs, for whom, from c.1895, the original estate owner’s descendants appear to have institutionalised ‘genial hospitality’ through provision of much of the apparatus required for the maintenance of the types of social codes that developed at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first half of the twentieth century.

Contributions to Australian social history Spencer-Wood argues for the importance of ‘material culture [to] symbolize and influence ideologies, ideas and knowledge’ (2019: 257). This applies to the tableware and teaware remains from OKH and their role in social practice in this context, and the significance of such microhistories of social behaviour for Australian social history.

The importance of tea-drinking in both British and Australian society has been noted above (see chapter two, p. 18). As argued throughout this study, both the artefactual and archival evidence for OKH provide very little evidence for coffee-drinking as an important social practice, throughout the homestead’s occupancy. While not necessarily contributing to current understandings of the place of tea-drinking in Australia’s history, the analyses of the Kinchega Estate bookkeeping records, with the apparently more limited amounts of coffee and of specific coffee-drinking apparatus being purchased than of tea and teawares, confirm its secondary significance in this particular context. At the same time, these archives demonstrate a change c.1940, with purchases by the estate of specified coffee cups and saucers (Appendix 6) that illustrate a new social status for coffee-drinking around this time.

As articulated in chapter two, the period covered by this study and the occupancy of OKH embrace important phases of Australia’s development of nationhood – from late nineteenth-century colonialism to periods of the Federation Project, the pre-First World War years and the First World War, then the interwar years and the Second World War and its immediate aftermath. Russell argued (2002: 433) that the spread of pastoralism had been instrumental in changing the social structure of Australia from its roots as a penal colony. The later period covered in this study involves this spread into further, more remote, regions of Australia in an essentially post-penal, but still colonial, period. These OKH ceramic remains document some of the ways in which remote but economically significant sectors of Australian society clung to British social codes into the final quarter of the nineteenth century. The OKH inhabitants had brought these codes and values with them into this new environment, probably with considerable difficulty, and yet with little opportunity at first to use of them to demonstrate these values to others. The diaries and reports discussed in chapter three, particularly the apparatus for genteel display whose arrival had so delighted Mrs Gunn, and the newspaper reports discussed in chapter nine, confirm that few visitors would have been guests at the such outback homesteads, but also that their reception often espoused Victorian middle-class manners and etiquette. While seemingly incongruous in this context, such apparatus would have provided familiar and nostalgic settings.

Both the artefactual and archival evidence indicate that from the end of the nineteenth century the importance of Victorian socio-cultural distinctions was waning at OKH, and that tea-drinking was evidently becoming increasingly more democratic. This was not the democracy of billy tea in the bush, though. Rather, this democratisation still demonstrated codes of respectability and hospitality by serving tea, possibly to a wider range of guests, using gilded ceramic tea sets. And this democratising would seem to have increased during the interwar years, as most of the OKH teawares became seemingly plainer and cheaper. However, there were exceptions. The remains of seemingly rather feminine decal-decorated teawares and yellow- and pink-bodied cups and saucers at OKH, probably dating from the late 1930s, may have served as both tea- and coffee-drinking settings for at least some of the increasing numbers of female visitors to this homestead. For such women, it undoubtedly became increasingly easy, both in terms of transport and of codes of hospitality, to visit this homestead. While the larger, plainer tea sets demonstrate a greater democratisation of tea-drinking at OKH, these particular coloured teawares may represent a continued, or perhaps renewed, display of some level of exclusivity over the interwar years and beyond. It is tantalising to see the meaning of such teawares, like the blue dyedbody breakfast set discussed above, as the reintroduced enactment of British manners and etiquette in the 1920s and 1930s, and possibly into the 1950s, that lived on in the social lives of some occupants of this homestead, and especially women, who were less influenced by changing

As the twentieth century progressed, though, the OKH ceramics articulate the ways in which Australians developed their own social codes – and at first more internationalised values and then renewed British but more democratic values – that set them apart from their Victorian forebears and their predecessors at OKH, and freed them ‘from snobbery, fluidity and social boundaries’ (Russell 2010: 357). Here, these ceramics confirm Donald’s 1912 report of the ‘genial hospitality’ of the squatter, rather than Desmond’s contemporary perspectives on the uncouthness of such individuals (see chapter two, p. 17). The study’s integrated material, but not conflated, approach to the artefactual, documentary and oral evidence provides 152

Concluding Discussion political loyalties and intellectual affiliations than some of their urban counterparts, and for whom such objects still provided a sense of social stability and security.

have occurred. This is because most of the main occupants of OKH during this period do not appear to have included female family members, let alone because of a lack of female visitors. These teawares at OKH were more probably used by male occupants of the homestead for social networking, in small, intimate groups, with other male pastoral station owners and managers and business associates, and perhaps when taking tea alone. These tea sets, and some of the early tableware sets, would have provided a display of gentility that would have assured other homestead occupants (e.g. household employees) and any visitors of the social standing of these men, irrespective of the likely lack of any presence of appropriate women to perform such display. Indeed, these tea sets would reinforce Lawrence’s intimation (see chapter two, p. 22), that such signs of ‘domesticity’ do not require the presence of women, and that middle-class men were quite capable of monopolising and manipulating tea-drinking, using the types of ‘pretty china’ that Knight, and Gray (2013), argued were the premise of women in Britain and in more urban colonial settings. Such observations serve to subvert romanticised notions of the tough masculinity of the bushman and his billy tea, and more particularly notions of the lack of sophistication and of the coarseness of the outback squatter that were tropes employed by the urban literary elite. Indeed, this study demonstrates the situatedness of gendered roles, spatially as well as chronologically (cf. Spencer-Wood 2019: 262). As demonstrated in Miss Grieve’s photo, middle-class men could distinguish themselves from the rest of the outback male society by indulging in, and indeed manipulating, the types of tea-drinking occasions that epitomised female practice in urban society (see also Allison and Cremin 2006: fig. 4). Rather than expressing their ‘femininity’ and ‘domesticity’, these men used decorated teawares, without feeling ‘incompetent’, to express their social status and social values to visitors, to other station workers, and perhaps also to themselves, as the only ‘guardians of morality’ in this particular context. They were no doubt more nostalgic for and less mocking of such genteel display than their counterparts in more urban contexts.

Perhaps more importantly, and more reliably, this study provides greater insights into gendered practices associated with Victorian genteel performance in this outback context, in ways that might be considered subversive. As discussed in chapter two (pp. 19–21) and noted in chapter nine (p. 131), Knight drew attention to associations in late nineteenth-century Australian society of the genteel performance of ‘afternoon tea’ with ‘pretty china, beautiful women, artistic surroundings …’. Knight argued that women, in both urban and rural contexts, were responsible for creating such artistic surroundings and for monopolising tea-drinking (see e.g. Figure 7). She reported on contemporary opinion that, while men took part in afternoon tea and have been documented doing so (e.g. Figure 6), they were ‘incompetent’ in this context and ‘resistant’ to, even mocking of, this form of social interaction (Knight 2011: 35–36; see also chapter two, p. 16). At the same time, though, she argued that this situation was reversed in the bush, where tea-drinking was linked to masculinity and the concept of the ‘tough bushman’. Here Knight was essentially referring to ‘the billy’, and billy tea, as discussed by Griggs (see chapter two, p. 19), rather than to this ‘pretty china’. The teawares, and to a certain extent the tablewares from OKH, and particularly those dated prior to 1890, seem to paint a different picture. As discussed, in remote rural contexts, such as at OKH, there were few opportunities during the nineteenth century and even into the early twentieth century for women of European origin to socialise, and particularly with other women. Lack of any close neighbours made the genteel practices of ‘making calls’ or ‘at home’ afternoon tea parties an impossibility. Travel by women and children within and to such regions was rare. Indeed, Mrs Cambridge’s visits in the last decades of the nineteenth century to pastoral stations in less remote regions than the west Darling were sufficiently momentous to provide occasions for neighbouring squatters and their wives to be invited to dinner parties. While tea-drinking was a recurring theme in Mrs Cambridge’s novels (see chapter two, p. 19), no mention is made by either her or the other diarists of feminine afternoon tea parties in such contexts. Miss Grieve described numerous tea-drinking occasions with homestead occupants, including in the shearers’ kitchen, but her photograph (Figure 6) indicates that, even in the early twentieth century, more formal tea-drinking occasions involved limited numbers of people, who included men. It is also notable in Grieve’s photograph that both men and women are using the same matching, decorated, dainty teawares, which would appear to dispel any image of the ‘tough bushman’ among such men.

Thus, this study emphasises aspects of the social history of the outback that are often missing from traditional histories of the outback and of pastoralism. It demonstrates the significance of different physical contexts for our understandings of Australian social history, providing detailed glimpses of aspects of humanness (Barrett 2016: 133) that can be seen to have been enacted in different ways in this remote rural context than in more urban areas. This artefactual study demonstrates the significant role played by the environment – physical and economic – in adapting modes of social behaviour in this outback context, emphasising the dual roles of the landscape and of these material objects in shaping the social worlds of the OKH occupants, and of people associated with the pastoral industry, in perhaps unexpected ways.

The relatively numerous, but small and often fairly dainty, pre-1890 tea sets recorded at OKH would appear to be the types that would have suited feminine afternoon teas. However, as argued above, such gatherings were unlikely to

Gill argued that the geographies and the histories of outback pastoralism have downplayed the relationship of landscape and community (2005: 40), and that ‘artefacts 153

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? of the pastoral industry such as homesteads … have been removed’ (2005: 47; see Allison 2003: 163–66). He referred to the ‘hope’ and the ‘strong moral code’ of pastoralists and the need to acknowledge ‘pastoralists’ personal and collective experience of, and engagement with, the land’ (Gill 2005: 49). This study does not address the day-to-day relationships between the land and pastoralism of people involved in this industry. Rather, it addresses the social transplantation these two factors required for European settlers in such contexts, and how the hope and moral codes of these settlers formed coping mechanisms through social practices that reflected but also differed from those in urban contexts. And it demonstrates the fundamental role of ceramic objects in this regard.

characterised the social practices of a particular group of people who used them in a specific context, and it has traced the changes in these practices in this specific place. Thus, these analyses have generated new ways of examining some of the intimacies of people’s social lives in a context which, to date, has received little attention. As outlined in the section above, this homestead comprises a very specific context in the British colonial and postcolonial worlds, both in terms of the physical environment and socio-economically. By taking an interrogative approach to these objects, to these people and to their records, this study has interwoven the meanings of these material remains into this environment. A particular significance of this study is the availability of records (material and documentary) that allow us to establish relatively close ‘connections between known people and archaeological artefacts’ (Owens and Jeffries 2016: 807), as well as the connections of both to landscape. However, this study has not conflated these records, and has tried to avoid ‘socializ[ing] things so thoroughly that they no longer actually appear in archaeological interpretation’ (Mullins 2014: 109).

This study also potentially demonstrates other ways in which social behaviour associated with pastoralism in outback Australia developed differently from that in less remote regions of British colonial and post-colonial worlds. As discussed in chapter two, Gray (2013: 28) outlined the important role of middle-class women in dispensing tea in both private and public gatherings in late nineteenth-century Britain. The twentieth-century teawares at OKH demonstrate that in many ways such private and public social practices intersected at this homestead. The newspaper reports of rather public events taking place at Kinchega, and the extensive plain white and ‘white and gold’ tea sets recorded at OKH, with evidence for these teawares’ institutionalisation in the Kinchega Estate records, indicate that by the early twentieth century, with greater local transport opportunities and increasing democratisation of social behaviour, homesteads like OKH could often play important roles in the wider local community events that would take the place of more public arenas in the British world, as referred to by Gray.

Schouwenburg argues that ‘new materialist readings result in surprising and challenging conceptualizations of matter and the agency of objects’ (2015: 63) and that ‘[b]y focusing on flows and networks of relations that are at the same time cultural, social, political and natural, a new materialist history breaks through the cultural turn’s hegemony of culture …’ (2015: 69). The singularised archaeological approach and the specificity of context have meant that this study has been able to investigate objects which are relatively familiar and mundane across the British world, but which demonstrate how they have acquired a specific social significance in this relatively unfamiliar landscape, and in this particular context.

Contributions to singularised approaches and connected social histories

Magnússon argued that, while a singularised microhistorical approach ‘looks inward and studies all aspects in close detail’ (2003: 720), ‘metanarratives can obviously not be avoided’ (2003: 721). As outlined in chapter one (p. 9), Orser likewise argues that ‘[m]icrohistory and historical archaeology are important comrades, even in the broadscale analysis of the modern world’, but that ‘any attempt to understand human activity at the global level – at least for archaeologists – must necessarily begin with small units, and often these small units are minute indeed’ (2016: 175). According to Orser, though, a singularised approach in historical archaeology risks becoming antiquarian if it does not ‘work upward from the single plane [although] without reducing the analysis to macrohistory’ (2016: 180). As also outlined in chapter one (p. 9), Orser specifically stressed a need to ‘understand the social networks that operated within specific past historical contexts’ (2016: 180).

This study has foregrounded the materiality of a specific local context of one Australian outback homestead and has involved small-scale analyses that consider the agency of objects and the relationships among these objects, people’s social behaviour and the environment. The approaches and the results have the potential to reach beyond the disciplines of archaeology and Australian social history and to contribute to histories of ‘the British world’, and also to wider global histories. Magnússon argued that ‘microhistorians placed their emphasis on small units and how people conducted their lives within them’ (2003: 709), and Orser has emphasised (2016: 175) the important association of microhistory with historical archaeology. This study takes what Mímisson refers to as a ‘bottom’ (2014: 150), rather than Orser’s essentially ‘bottom up’ approach (2016: 176), in that it has looked for particular meaning through detailed analyses of objects and the specific people who used them, within a single unit. Through its scrutiny of the details of these seemingly relatively mundane and familiar objects, it has

While accepting a singularised ‘bottom’ approach that does not necessarily require substantiation of its contribution to metanarratives, the socio-economic sphere of OKH means that this specific and detailed study of social practice is 154

Concluding Discussion essentially connected to social behaviour across the British world and to wider global socio-economic histories. That is, as discussed in chapter one, this outback homestead is associated with one of Australia’s most global industries – the wool industry. Also, this particular industry and the types of people involved in it, who are the main focus of this study, are not traditionally seen as ‘the other’ in British colonial histories. For these reasons, while avoiding the grand narratives of imperial, colonial or global histories (see Potter and Saha 2015), this study can contribute to the development of more informed metanarratives, by providing detailed insights into local social conditions that are connected to and that impacted on people of European, and particularly British origin, but who are mainly not particularly ‘British’.

important symbols of Britishness and Victorian gentility to the OKH occupants during the early years, but may have seemed rather quaint to more urbanised visitors. Women’s consumption behaviours are often considered more sensitive to the acquisition of consumer goods (see Yentsch 2011). The relative absence of women at OKH may have been a contributing factor to a relative absence of fashionable household goods in the early years. Thus, access alone – the lack of economic and transport opportunities to purchase more fashionable household goods – is not the only criterion for their distribution. Many other factors are at play here, and can be equally significant. The introduction of more fashionable tablewares and teawares at the turn of the century could be a result of the increased presence, or involvement, of women as much as a demonstration of how Belich’s ‘recolonial bridge’ played out in the material realm. This study demonstrates the significance of place, the importance of material culture to British colonists ‘to enshrine the worlds they imagined’ (Pietsch 2013: 456), and the adaptation of seemingly established social and gendered practices to meet environmental conditions.

Pietsch argues that ‘British World case studies have tended to underplay the complications of local conditions and the contested politics of specific colonial identities’ (2013: 445). According to Pietsch, ‘we need to think not only about the places in which people lived but also about the networks and exchanges that shaped their lives and the emotions and feelings that created internal landscapes of longing and belonging’ (2013: 447). Potter and Saha (2015) similarly argue that ‘we need to push the agenda of scalar revisionism further by acknowledging the varied experiences of particular regions within different empires and within different colonies’. They argue that ‘[c] onnected histories of empire grounded in specific places and concerned with particular individuals might help us avoid the simplifications’ and ‘offer accounts that accord more agency to individuals, and recognise the crucial importance of choice, contingency and chance’. This study can provide insights into social identities and the meaning of ‘Britishness’ in a particular context where such phenomena are not well explored. In this regard, the stories of the people who occupied OKH over this period can be ‘tied … into much more general narratives of long-term social changes’ (Magnússon, 2003: 718) through the late nineteenth and into the twentieth century, and can also be used to ‘test generalisations’ (Magnússon, 2003: 711) about social practices across British colonial and post-colonial worlds. Specific examples, as outlined above, are: the emotional connections between ceramics, nostalgia and the security of one’s social status; concepts of diet and fashions of social practice across the British world; generalisations about gendered Victorian gentility and the requirements for particular audiences for genteel display; and notions of what constitutes public and private space in the British world. Generalisations about these concepts and behaviours across the British world can often be misleading.

This ‘piece of microresearch therefore builds upon an intellectual frame of reference’ (Magnússon 2003: 720) that is our understanding of British and of Australian social behaviour. At the same time, though, it emphasises a specific ‘interrelationship between human beings and their environment’ and the need ‘to reduce the scale’ (Magnússon 2003: 720), and, importantly in this regard, a ‘material turn’. Broader macrohistorical approaches to this intellectual frame of reference have the potential to downplay the significance of specific environments in the development of social behaviour across the British world, but micro-archaeological approaches to mundane artefacts serve to avoid such generalised, and generalising, approaches. Appadurai had referred to ‘standards and criteria (symbolic, classificatory and moral)’ that can change the meanings of things (see chapter one (p. 7) and Michael Smith has more recently stressed the synergies between archaeological and social sciences approaches that focus on ‘sampling, rigour, and measurement’ for ‘better description and explanation of human behaviour … in the past’ (2017: 526). This study involves sampling and measurement, and hopefully some degree of rigour, for a detailed classification of material things that also considers their symbolic and moral meaning and the significance of this material for past human behaviour at this homestead. This may not have been Appadurai’s meaning here, but this study has highlighted the need for detailed classification and rigorous analyses of the chronology and composition of material remains, without undue recourse to grand narratives, based on other archaeological and historical contexts, to develop better understanding of human behaviour in a particular context. Thus, it contributes both an understanding of such specific human behaviour and also fresh data for more critically informed metanarratives about social behaviour and its interconnectedness, and otherwise, across British colonial and post-colonial worlds.

Of particular note here is, again, Lawrence’s argument that ‘even the most isolated’ in the British colonial world could possess the latest goods (see chapter two, p. 21). However, the ‘old-fashioned’ tablewares and teawares recorded at OKH, with the earliest having been manufactured possibly half a century before this homestead was occupied (see chapter six, p. 90), suggest that this was not always the case here. These table settings may have been 155

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Indeed, the ‘[c]ultural anxieties’ of the ‘British world’ since the 1970s, with ‘[c]loser integration of Britain with the European Union’ (Johnson 2003: 18), are likely to be revisited in the coming decades following the concerns being again raised by Brexit about what it means to be politically and economically British, and also culturally. When the world comes to terms with Brexit and the aftermath of the 2016 US elections and associated global economic changes, concepts of ‘a British World’ and of global histories are likely to be even more critically examined. The potential ‘post-global’ conditions could bring further anxiety to perspectives on the history of the global (Berg 2013), and indeed to increasing emphases in archaeology on cross-cultural connectivity (see Hodos 2017). Singularised, micro-archaeological studies may help us avoid the macrohistories about social behaviour that are currently being developed in the frameworks of current political processes.

through ‘deductive validity’. Here, historical archaeology is better placed than prehistory to extend the limits of its interpretation. However, as stated, documentary sources and historical studies have not provided the investigative frameworks for this study, but have been interrogated through a micro-archaeological approach. The archival records of the Kinchega Pastoral Estate and local newspaper reports have added a more detailed chronological framework to this study that has allowed us to extend our interpretations. More specifically, the former help us understand the procuring processes for the tableware and teaware remains recorded at OKH, and demonstrate levels of institutionalised social values in a manner that is perhaps unique to such outback households. This institutionalisation demonstrates a world in which individual choice and individualism, even at the level of household, was much more restricted than in contemporary urban spheres or, indeed, in current postcolonial worlds.

Summary

As noted above, this micro-archaeological study demonstrates the role of archaeological artefacts in investigating the production and maintenance of social values, but also the roles of these objects in the enactment of the practices of social production and maintenance. It serves to demonstrate that social concepts of manners, gentility and gendered social practices in all corners of the British world are in large part responsible for the extensive trade in ceramics and associated goods across this world. It also demonstrates changing social practices in a specific context across a period in Australian history that embraced the formation of Australian nationhood, and shows that social enactment and the nature of its ‘entanglement with things’ are relative to place, including very localised place.

Alexandra Ion and John Barrett argue that archaeology is ‘questioning of the limits of [its] interpretation’, (2016: 131). While Blanco-Gonzalez has similarly stressed that ‘[t]he challenge of inferring conclusions from material evidence remains far from resolved’, he has also emphasised ‘“pessimistic normative” scholarship [that provides] “a neutral description of past facts”’ and ‘optimistic archaeologists [who seek] deductive validity’ (2017: 1104). One of the principal objectives of the Kinchega Archaeological Research Project (KARP) has been to gain better understandings of domestic and social life associated with the pastoral industry in outback Australia, through the investigation of archaeological objects pertaining to household activities. Analyses of the remains of tablewares and teawares from OKH, as part of this household material culture, can be used to provide insights into the social aspirations, social interactions and social networking in this particular context. Through this objective, this microarchaeological study can provide a unique and detailed glimpse of social behaviour in a specific colonial and postcolonial context in Australian society that can bring new approaches and fresh perspectives to our investigations of colonial and post-colonial worlds.

This study also serves as a reminder, in our massconsumption world, of the rapid changes in social behaviour and ‘home entertainment’ that took place in the late nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth century – changes that were in part dependent on transport and communications systems, but not exclusively. Changes in manners and social mores were often more important than these more practical issues. Many proposals and suppositions in this study cannot be easily validated, but hopefully provide food for thought, and data for further reanalysis, as well as examples of detailed analytical procedures whereby artefacts and artefact assemblages can be better utilised to provide greater understandings of social practices at differing scalar levels in time and space.

A major significance of this study is that the impetus for the levels of inquiry into this social world has grown from the analyses of material-cultural remains, be it

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Appendices Note: Appendices 2–8 are available to download from www.barpublishing.com/additional-downloads.html

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Appendix 1 Abbreviations and Glossary Abbreviations (mostly used in appendices) BH – Broken Hill

N/A – not applicable

BHP – Broken Hill Proprietary, mining company

NI – no information

E – earthenware

NSW – New South Wales

Diam. – diameter

PD – decorated porcelain

Frag. – fragment

PG – gilded porcelain

KARP – the Kinchega Archaeological Research Project

RCa – This abbreviation is used in the Kinchega Estate bookkeeping records as a destination for the stores, but its meaning is unknown (see Appendix 6). This also applies to ‘SS’ and ‘S’.

L. – length MIC – minimum item count

Tea/Tab – teaware or tableware

MNI – minimum number of items

Th. – thickness

MVC – minimum vessel count

TP – transfer printed

MNV – minimum number of vessels

W. – width

OKH – the Old Kinchega Homestead Glossary Billabong – a lake or pond that has formed from a bend in the river and has become isolated after a river changes course.

Homestead – an Australian homestead is the main residence and complex of buildings on a pastoral run or pastoral station, occupied by the station owner, manager, or possibly overseer, his family and household staff, as well as other station workers (e.g. station bookkeepers).

Billy – a metal (usually tin) pot with a lid and wire handle, used for cooking over an open fire. Boundary rider – a person, usually male, employed to maintain the outer fences of a cattle or sheep station. They would often work a considerable distance from the station homestead and would be provided with supplies from the station store. Their work was often isolated, and sometimes dangerous.

Jackaroo – a young man who worked on a pastoral station to gain experience, often to become an owner, manager or overseer. Term also used for young men wanting overseas experience (e.g. from Britain or New Zealand) working on an Australian pastoral station. Jigger – a machine for making flatware, including plates and saucers, that leaves evidence of its use on the base of such vessels.

Bush – see ‘outback’. Decal – similar to a transfer print, but applied over the glaze, rather than under.

Marly – a term used for the wide area, or brim, between the shoulder and the rim of a plate or vessel.

Estate (pastoral) – see ‘pastoral run’.

Outback – the vast and remote interior of Australia. It is more remote than ‘the bush’, which refers to sparsely inhabited areas that are closer to but still outside urban centres.

Gymkhana – originally a term used in India the place of an assembly. Used in the British colonies and former colonies for a multi-game equestrian competition and associated social event. 169

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Race meeting – a term that refers to horse races that usually took place annually and were social events.

Sprigged – ceramic decoration comprising a small moulded addition to the surface of a vessel.

Pannikin – a metal (usually tin or enamel) cup used for drinking.

Squatter – a pastoralist who took up land to graze herds beyond boundaries, often without government authority, but could ultimately be granted a legitimate lease of the same land.

Pastoral run – a large holding of land, sometimes covering several square miles, used to graze sheep or cattle, and owned or leased for this purpose either as a single identity or as part of a larger series of runs (e.g. as in the Kinchega Pastoral Estate). Comparable to a ‘ranch’ in North America.

Squattoracy – the class of squatters and their families who rose, from often illegal ‘squatters’ on unoccupied land, to be the elites of rural Australia, and among the wealthiest in the colony of New South Wales, many of them from upper and middle-class English and Scottish families.

Pastoral station – see ‘pastoral run’. Pastoralists – in this context, these were, initially, European colonists who ran herds, mainly sheep but also cattle, for wool and meat, in the outback landscape.

Station – see ‘pastoral station’. Ticket-of-leave – a document, or ticket, which indicated that a convict had been granted parole and particular freedoms, such as the right to seek employment in specified districts.

Picnic races – amateur horse racing events that are important social events in rural Australia.

Yabby – an Australian native freshwater crustacean, similar to a small crayfish.

170

Appendix 9 Comparative Quantities of Types of Tablewares and Teawaresand their Likely Sets among Dwellings at Several Australian Sites

171

c.1890–1955

c.1876–1955

OKH

172 ?

111 Gloucester St – Mrs Lewis’ boarding house

1861–73

“

Same as site

1840–1900

1840–91

“

“

Port Adelaide 1863–1900

Same as site

Same as site

Same as site

Working-class urban households – Adelaide

Government 1840– to early House, Sydney 20th cent.

Albion; Asiatic Pheasant; Willow; 4 black Rhine

Farrow cottage, Jane 219 MVC Street

2

Albion; Asiatic Pheasant; Willow 3 Albion; Rhine; Willow

110 MVC

mainly dinner plates

0

0

2

8

12 different types of Willow; Asiatic Pheasant; Albion; decoration; Cable; banded; moulded; plain 37 different patterns

Blue transfer-printed Rhine

Asiatic Pheasant; Canton

Willow; Two Temples; Gem; Fibre; Asiatic Pheasant; Albion; Cable; View over Lake

McKay cottage, Jane 72 MVC Street

Quebec Street

Servants’ quarters? (3 226 MIC sites)

(as above)

95 Gloucester St, rear

Same as site

late 19th cent. to 1902

“

Same as site

(as above)

4 Cribbs St

Same as site

c.1854–1915

“

(as above)

4 Carahers Lane

“

c.1848/58–c.1907 Same as site

c.1850–1902

“

3

“

“

“

138 MNV

51 MNV

51 MNV

c.121 MIC

?

MNV 23

(see tablewares)

Cuba; 12-sided; gilded and dark 5+1 very large 947 sherds; 378 blue-banded; relief-moulded; relief-moulded MNV dyed-body; plain white set

811 sherds; 208 MNV

128 (all sites: c.1833 to Cumberland c.4,670 sherds Willow; Two Temples; floral probably 1860 St total)

51 sherds; 40 MNV

Willow; Albion; Asiatic Pheasant; 6–8 Rhine; Cable; blue band-and-line

153 sherds; 87 MNV

(as above)

c.1833–1931

OKH

Teaware vessel nos.

Common tableware types at site Tableware sets

Tableware vessel nos.

c.1833 to 1 Carahers probably 1860 Lane

The Rocks

Working-class urban households – Sydney

c.1876–90

c.1876–1955

OKH

OKH

Dates (ceramic House assemblages)

Dates (sites)

Site

Teaware sets

23 different wares and 41 patterns

?

N/A

N/A

N/A

1

N/A

8 Chelsea Sprig; ‘white and 31 gold’; Rhine; red edgeware

Chelsea Sprig; ‘white and gold’; Priory

Chelsea Sprig; gilt, red and 9 blue edgeware

undecorated earthenwares; sprigged; banded; gilded bone china

purple transfer print

N/A

N/A

N/A

chunky moulded earthenware

N/A

5–7 large ‘white Willow; sailing boats; Wattle; dyed-body; ‘white and gold’ and and gold’; plain white plain white set(s)

Honeysuckle; May Flower; 10 Chelsea Sprig

Common teaware types at site

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

2

Same as site

Same as site

Same as site

c.1850s–90s (mean 1888)

c.1850s–90s (mean 1863)

c. 1850s–90s (mean 1863)

“

“

“

173

c.1850–60

Rev. Willoughby Bean’s Parsonage

Same as site

1844–74

86 MNV

157 MNI

There seems to be an error in Lawrence’s sherd and vessel count (2000: 130 and 185).

1844–1920

‘Viewbank’

5 MNV

Willow; Rhine; Eton College

5

Asiatic Pheasant; Rhine; Willow; Queen’s; Summer Flowers; Berlin 14 Swirl

0

whiteware

labourers’ hut

Same as site

c.1830–50

“

2?

bone china and whiteware; transfer prints include Willow, Aquatic, Coral Border

‘home farm’ 12 MNV cottage

Same as site

c.1830–50

“

at least 1

at least 8 transfer prints, including Wild Rose, Willow, Marble

21 MNV

cottage NE of stables

Same as site

c.1830–50

“

13 MNV

at least 1

at least 7 transfer prints, including Willow, Two Temples, Forest

Same as site

c.1830–40

“

blacksmith’s 19 MNV cottage

Same as site

c.1830–50

“

54

130 MNI

2 MNV

13 MNV

20 MNV

9 MNV 19 MNV

c.1850 to late 19th cent. transfer prints include Willow, at least 2? Rhine, marble-type; Coral Border

24 MNV

44 sherds, 6 MNV

1 sherd, 2 MNV2

10 sherds, 9 MNV

SW gatehouse of 14 MNV stables

c.4

0

0

0

78 sherds, 23–24 MNV

Willow; Rhine; Asiatic Pheasant; at least 1? Cable

at least 7 transfer prints, including Cable, Eton College, Willow

“

“

“

0

main house 11 MNV entrance hall

95 sherds, 7 MNV

19 sherds, 1 MNV

41 sherds, 8 MNV

101 sherds, Asiatic Pheasant; Willow? 19–20 MNV

main house bathroom 25 MNV and privies

Stone House

Garden House

Fireplace House

Clock House

c.1831 to late 19th cent.

1831–1920

1831–1920

“

Lake Innes Estate

Middle-class semi-rural households

Same as site

c.1850s–90s (mean 1878)

Dolly’s Creek

Working-class rural households – Dolly’s Creek

at least 1

4?

0?

5?

0

0

0

Flow blue; floral black; Chantilly; gilded

6

12

0

blue and brown transfer printed, Berlin Swirl; Marble; banded and gilded; sprigged

at least 2

Grey and blue transfer printed,

Black, blue and brown 3? transfer printed; flow blue

Blue transfer printed; Chelsea Sprig

blue and green transferprinted

gilded bone china

Blue and green transferprinted; gilt banded; Chelsea Sprig

“

“

“

Asiatic Pheasant; Willow? 4

Comparative Quantities of Types of Tablewares and Teawares

Appendix 10 Known Occupants and Likely Occupants of the Old Kinchega Homestead Date

Managers

Family

 Family names

Other occupants

Occupation

Residence

1870?–77

Thomas J. Taylor

 

 

 

 

Building A?

 

 

brother William

 

 

“

 

 

brother Matthew

 

 

“

1877–87

Henry J. Phillips

 

 

 

“

 

 

 

wife

former Miss Dark

 

 

“

 

 

child

Alice

 

 

“

 

 

child

Edith

 

 

“

 

 

child

Fanny

 

 

“

 

 

child

Samuel

 

 

“

 

 

 

 

 

  bookkeeper  

 

 

 

 

Harold White Hughes

 

 

 

 

Herbert White Hughes

1887–1915

Harold White Hughes

 

 

 

 

 

Building A?

 

female

cook

male

groom (cook’s husband)  

 

 

 

 

male

gardener

Building Y?

 

 

 

 

male

cowboy

 

 

 

 

 

male?

bookkeeper

Building C?

 

 

 

 

male

horse-and-buggy boy

 

 

 

 

male

cook

Building B? 

 

Overseers

 

 

 

 

 

1915–28

Arthur Hayes

 

 

 

 

Building A

 

 

wife

Bertha (nee Allen)

 

 

“

child

Margaret (born 1917 –   married name Carter)

 

“

 

 

 

 

child

Claudine (born 1920)  

 

“

 

 

child

Muriel (born 1922)

 

 

“

 

 

child

Owen (born 17 March   1923)

 

“

 

 

 

 

Tom Kit?

gardener (Chinese?)

Building Y

1927–31/33? Michael Francis Phelan  

 

 

 

Building A?

 

Alice Margaret (nee Miller, opera singer)

 

 

“

 

wife

 

 

child

Eileen

 

 

“

 

 

child

Elizabeth

 

 

“

1934–35(?)

Donald McLennan

 

 

 

 

Building A

 

 

wife

Maisie (nee Warren)

 

 

“

 

 

child

Jim (born c.1924)

 

 

“

 

 

child

Fay (born 1928)

 

 

“

 

 

 

 

male (Chinese)

gardener

175

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Date

Managers

Family

 Family names

Other occupants

Occupation

Residence

1936

 

 

 

Fred Karlson

groom

 

 

 

 

 

Dolly

domestic staff (Fred’s wife)

  Building A

1943–49

Albert Robert Beven

 

 

 

 

 

 

wife

Linda

 

 

“

 

 

child

Peter Robert (born 1940)

 

 

“

 

 

child

Marion (born 1943)

 

 

“

 

 

 

 

male

Irish gardener

Building R

1947

 

 

 

Ted Piper

gardener

 

 

 

 

 

Ada Piper

cook

 

1945/47

 

 

 

Crombie?

Dutch cook

Building B

 

 

 

 

Crombie?

Dutch handyman

Building B

1949

Sunny Barraclough

 

 

 

 

Building A?

 

Archie Smith

 

 

 

 

Building A?

1950?–55

Harry Files

 

 

 

 

Building A

 

 

wife

Melba

 

 

Building A

 

 

child

Arthur

 

 

Building A

 

 

 

Noeleen

 

 

Building A

 

 

 

Robin

 

 

Building A Building R Building R

 

 

 

 

Mac MacDonald (male)

 

 

 

 

Andy MacDonald (female)

176

Figures

Appendix 11 Figures

Figure 12. Cat. no. A02Ver/56/0097, earthenware plate with blue transfer-printed Willow pattern, showing profile. (Drawing by Mandy Mottram for KARP.)

Figure 13. Cat. no. DD/588/0006, earthenware plate with blue transfer-printed Albion pattern. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes from sketch by V. Esposito for KARP.)

177

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 14. Cat. no. DD/590/0007, rim fragment of an earthenware plate with blue transfer-printed Albion pattern. (KARP photo.)

Figure 15. Cat. no. DD/507.09/0066, rim fragment from an earthenware plate with blue transfer-printed Asiatic Pheasant pattern, showing deep well and pattern. (KARP photo.)

Figure 16. Cat. no. A02XVer/123/0018, rim fragment from an earthenware soup plate with blue transfer-printed Asiatic Pheasant pattern, showing a greyish pattern colour. (KARP photo.)

Figure 17. Cat. no. A02XVer/123/0018, earthenware soup plate with blue transfer-printed Asiatic Pheasant pattern, showing angular shoulder. (Drawing by Mandy Mottram for KARP.)

178

Figures

Figure 18. Cat. nos. DD/534/0011a and b, fragments from two earthenware plates with a grey transfer-printed Rhine pattern. (KARP photo.)

Figure 20. Cat. no. DD/534/0011a, base fragment of an earthenware plate with grey Rhine pattern, and impressed date mark, probably ‘12/ 87’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 19. Cat. no. DD/534/0011b, base fragment of an earthenware plate, with grey Rhine pattern, with black maker’s mark: ‘BROWNFIELD & SONS (in banner)/ TRADE MARK (across twin globes)’. (KARP photo.)

179

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 21. Cat. no. DD/534/0011a, earthenware plate, with grey transfer-printed Rhine pattern. (Drawing by Mandy Mottram for KARP.)

Figure 23. Cat. no. DD/599/0005, fragments from an earthenware plate with a grey transfer-printed Rhine pattern, with people in boats. (KARP photo.)

Figure 22. Cat. no. DD/507.01/0001a, rim and base fragment from an earthenware plate with a grey transfer-printed Rhine pattern, with people in boats. (KARP photo.)

180

Figures

Figure 25. Cat. no. DD/507.05/0034a, rim and base fragment from an earthenware plate with mid-blue band-and-line pattern. (KARP photo.)

Figure 24. Cat. no. DD/507.05/0033, fragment from well of an earthenware plate with a grey transfer-printed Rhine pattern, with people in boats. (KARP photo.)

Figure 27. Cat. no. DD/556/0029, earthenware plate with purple transfer-printed Cable pattern. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes from sketch by V. Esposito for KARP.) Figure 26. Cat. no. DD/556/0029, fragments from an earthenware plate with purple transfer-printed Cable pattern. (KARP photo.)

Figure 29. Cat. no. A02Ver/056/0098, fragment from an earthenware serving dish with blue transfer-printed pattern of band of beads, rosette and ribbon band. (Drawing by Mandy Mottram for KARP.)

Figure 28. Cat. no. A02Ver/056/0098, fragment from an earthenware serving dish with blue transfer-printed pattern of band of beads, rosette and ribbon band. (KARP photo.)

181

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 30. Cat. no. DD/549/0009, rim fragment from an earthenware serving-dish lid with a brown transfer print with a vine and daisy pattern in fence/trellis. (KARP photo.) Figure 31. Cat. no. DD/574/0004, rim fragment of an earthenware plate decorated with blue transfer-printed Two Temples pattern. (KARP photo.)

Figure 32. Cat. no. DD/509.15/0146, a large rim fragment from an earthenware soup plate with blue-green transferprinted Cuba pattern, showing marly. (KARP photo.)

Figure 33. Cat. no. DD/509.12/0114, base fragment from an earthenware soup plate with blue-green maker’s mark: ‘POUNTNEY & CO LD/ CUBA (in an oval garter)’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 35. Cat. no. DD/573/0017d, rim fragment from a small oval earthenware gravy boat, with a dark blue-banded and gilded rim and gilded decoration on the body. (KARP photo.)

Figure 34. Cat. no. DD/548/0015, rim fragment from an earthenware serving-dish lid with brown transfer print with asymmetrical vegetal pattern. (KARP photo.)

182

Figures

Figure 36. Cat. no. DD/535/0014, base of a dark blue-banded earthenware soup plate with part of green maker’s mark: ‘… EMPIRE …’. (KARP photo.) Figure 37. Cat. no. DD/573/0016, oval base fragment from a dark blue-banded earthenware gravy boat with a gilded line around the base and remains of green maker’s mark: ‘E[MPIRE WARE]/ E.P.CO./ (crown)/ STOKE-ON-TRENT/ 9 ENGLAND 28’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 38. Cat. no. DD/510.13/0085b, dark blue-banded earthenware plate with green maker’s mark: ‘EMPIRE WARE/ (crown)/ … TRENT (in banner)’. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes from sketch by V. Esposito for KARP.)

Figure 39. Cat. no. DD/510.13/0085b, base fragment from a dark blue-banded earthenware plate with remains of green maker’s mark: ‘EMPIRE WARE/ (crown)/ … TRENT (in banner)’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 40. Cat. no. DD/510.11/0075, base fragment from a dark blue-banded earthenware plate with green maker’s mark: ‘EMPIRE W …/ (crown)/ STOKE-ON-TRE … / 1 ENGLAND 3’. (KARP photo.)

183

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 41. Cat. no. DD/537/0009, dark blue-banded earthenware plate with Empire ware base mark. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes from sketch by V. Esposito for KARP.)

Figure 42. Cat. no. DD/510.07/0050, dark blue-banded earthenware plate. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes from sketch by V. Esposito for KARP.)

Figure 43. Cat. no. DD/510.10/0067a, dark blue-banded earthenware plate with base mark: ‘… EMPIRE …’. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes from sketch by V. Esposito for KARP.)

Figure 44. Cat. no. DD/817/0003, large rim and base fragment from a dark blue-banded earthenware plate with green maker’s mark: ‘[REGD] SOL 391413/ (rising sun face)/ J & G MEAKIN/ ENGLAND’. (KARP photo.)

184

Figures

Figure 45. Cat. no. DD/817/0003, dark blue-banded earthenware plate with green maker’s mark: ‘REGD SOL 391413/ (rising sun face)/ J & G MEAKIN/ ENGLAND’. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes from sketch by V. Esposito for KARP.)

Figure 46. Cat. nos. DD/573/0017a, b and c, dark blue-banded earthenware plate. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes from sketch by V. Esposito for KARP.)

Figure 48. Cat. no. DD/578/0005, remains of a dark bluebanded earthenware bowl, showing profile. (KARP photo.)

Figure 47. Cat. no. DD/578/0005, remains of a dark bluebanded earthenware bowl. (KARP photo.)

185

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 50. Cat. no. DD/570/0020, dark blue-banded and gilded earthenware plate. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes from sketch by V. Esposito for KARP.)

Figure 49. Cat. no. DD/570/0020, large rim and base fragment from a dark blue-banded and gilded earthenware plate. (KARP photo.)

Figure 51. Cat. no. DD/577/0006b, an earthenware soup plate with relief-moulded feather pattern, showing profile. (Drawing by Mandy Mottram for KARP.)

186

Figures

Figure 52. Cat. no. DD/506.09/0043c, fragment of an earthenware plate with relief-moulded feather pattern, showing black maker’s mark: ‘IRONSTONE CHINA/ REGD SOL 391413/ (rising sun face)/ J & G MEAKIN/ ENGLAND’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 53. Cat. no. DD/506.09/0043c, earthenware plate with relief-moulded feather pattern and jigger marks on base. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes from sketch by V. Esposito for KARP.)

187

Figure 54. Cat. no. DD/819/0002, an earthenware plate with relief-moulded fan-and-scallop pattern. (Drawing by Mandy Mottram for KARP.)

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

188

Figures

Figure 55. Cat. no. DD/824/0001, large rim and base fragment of an earthenware plate with relief-moulded fanand-scallop pattern, with green maker’s mark: ‘(crown)/ WOOD & SONS (in banner)/ BURSLEM/ ENGLAND’; and impressed mark ‘WS 1023’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 56. Cat. no. DD/824/0001, large rim and base fragment of an earthenware plate with relief-moulded fan-and-scallop pattern, showing green base mark: ‘(crown)/ WOOD & SONS (in banner)/ BURSLEM/ ENGLAND’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 57. Cat. no. DD/824/0001, earthenware plate with relief-moulded fan-and-scallop pattern, and green maker’s mark: ‘(crown)/ WOOD & SONS (in banner)/ BURSLEM/ ENGLAND’. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes from sketch by V. Esposito for KARP.)

189

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 58. Cat. no. DD/513/0002a, two rim fragments from an earthenware plate with relief-moulded shell pattern. (KARP photo.)

Figure 59. Cat. no. DD/578/0006, base and rim fragment of an earthenware plate with relief-moulded shell pattern, and green maker’s mark: ‘(crest with letters “K N/ A/ Z W” supported by two dragons in front of rayed sunburst)/ NIPPON KOSHITSU TOKI CO/ MADE IN JAPAN’, impressed ‘x’ below. (KARP photo.)

Figure 60. Cat. no. DD/531/0005b, two rim fragments from an earthenware plate with relief-moulded beads and starburst (daisies?) pattern, and which had green maker’s mark: ‘(crown)/ WOOD & SONS LTD (in banner)/ ENGLAND’. (KARP photo.)

190

l)

k)

191 r)

m)

h)

c)

s)

n)

i)

d)

o)

j)

e)

Figure 61. Relief-moulded patterns identified on the rims of different earthenware tableware vessels: a) bead and raised band pattern (cat. no. DD/584/0004); b) stylised floral spray pattern (cat. no. DD/801/0016); c) festoon-and-shield decoration (cat. no. DD/822/0003); d) beads, ‘S’ scrolls and circles pattern (cat. no. DD/805/0019); e) thin lines and ‘C’ scrolls pattern (DD/593/0008); f) pattern of vertical ridges above pendant scroll (cat. no. DD/547/0010); g) feather pattern around rim and on shoulder (cat. nos. DD/506.04/0036a, b); h) wheat ears, daisies and scrolls (cat. no. DD/824/0014); i) ornate ‘C’ scrolls and grapes (cat. no. DD/822/0013); j) ribbon and bow decoration (cat. no. DD/549/0006); k) beads and ornate scrolls (cat. no. DD/534/0021); l) beads, lattice and floral garland (cat. no. DD/535/0013); m) simple ribbon decoration (cat. no. DD/514/0001); n) band of alternating daisies and dots (cat. no. DD/531/0007); o) ribbon scroll and fringe/comb decoration (cat. no. DD/576/0013); p) fringe/comb moulding and undulating lines (cat. no. DD/568/0002); q) tiara-like decoration (cat. no. DD/820/0038); r) ‘Lily of the Valley’ (cat. no. DD/579/0021); s) bead pattern on Meakin Centenary plate (cat. no. DD/522/0006). (KARP photos.)

q)

g)

f)

p)

b)

a)

Figures

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 62. Cat. no. DD/522/0006, base of a complete earthenware plate, with relief-moulded bead pattern, showing black maker’s mark: ‘BY/ REGD SOL 391413/ (rising sun face)/ J & G MEAKIN/ ENGLAND/ 1851/ CENTENARY (in banner)/ 1951’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 63. Cat. no. DD/522/0010, base and rim fragments from an earthenware bowl with relief-moulded decoration, and black maker’s mark: ‘C/ SWINNERTONS/ (lamp)/ STAFFORDSHIRE/ ENG ...’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 64. Cat. no. DD/531/0007a, earthenware plate with relief decoration of a band of alternating daisies and dots. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes from sketch by V. Esposito for KARP.)

192

Figures

Figure 65. Cat. no. DD/549/0006, earthenware plate with relief-moulded ribbon-and-bow pattern. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes from sketch by V. Esposito for KARP.)

193

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 67. Cat. no. DD/509.10/0101a, profile of white earthenware 12-sided plate. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes from sketch by V. Esposito for KARP.)

Figure 66. Cat. no. DD/509.10/0101a, two fragments from a white earthenware 12-sided plate. (KARP photo.)

Figure 68. Cat. no. DD/814/0010, white earthenware 12-sided plate. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes from sketch by V. Esposito for KARP.)

Figure 70. Cat. no. DD/801/0011, near complete plain white earthenware plate with black maker’s mark: ‘ROYAL IRONSTONE WARE/ (crown)/ JOHNSON BROS/ ENGLAND’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 69. Cat. no. DD/596/0009, remains of a plain white earthenware serving dish with green maker’s mark: ‘(crown)/ J & G MEAKIN/ HANLEY/ ENGLAND (all in banner)’. (KARP photo.)

194

Figures

Figure 71. Cat. no. DD/579/0014, plain white earthenware plate. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes from sketch by V. Esposito for KARP.)

Figure 72. Cat. no. DD/592/0011, fragments from rectangular blue dyed-body earthenware serving dish. (KARP photo.) Figure 73. Cat. no. DD/554/0001, fragment from the stem of a blue dyed-body earthenware vessel, possibly an egg cup. (KARP photo.)

Figure 74. Cat. no. A02/072/0048, blue dyed-body earthenware base fragment with black maker’s mark: ‘SWINNERT ... / (lamp)/ STAFFORDSHI[RE]/ MADE IN ENGL[AND]/ … CHELSE[A]’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 75. Cat. no. DD/563/0007, white earthenware base fragment with black maker’s mark: ‘IRON … / J & G MEAKIN (in banner across sun face)/ REGD LIMITED 43758/ HANLEY ENGLAND’. (KARP photo.)

195

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 77. Cat. no. DD/822/0016, interior of rim fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with blue transferprinted Honeysuckle pattern, showing blurring of transfer pattern. (KARP photo.)

Figure 76. Cat. no. DD/822/0016, exterior of rim fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with blue transferprinted Honeysuckle pattern. (KARP photo.)

Figure 78. Cat. no. DD/811/0017, exterior of rim fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with blue transferprinted Honeysuckle pattern, showing misplacement of transfer print at rim. (KARP photo.)

Figure 79. Cat. no. DD/811/0017, interior of rim fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with blue transferprinted Honeysuckle pattern, showing blurring of transfer pattern. (KARP photo.)

Figure 81. Cat. no. DD/515/0002, fragment from an earthenware cup with blue transfer-printed floral pattern featuring volute urns. (KARP photo.)

Figure 80. Cat. no. DD/588/0007, remains of an earthenware cup decorated with blue transfer-printed pattern of palmettes in volute scrolls with a band of ovolos below. (KARP photo.)

196

Figures

Figure 82. Cat. no. A02X/117/0002, fragment from an earthenware saucer decorated with a flown blue spongeprinted pattern. (KARP photo.)

Figure 83. Cat. no. DD/580/0005, rim fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with black transfer-printed pattern of a voluted vegetal design on a linear background. (KARP photo.)

Figure 85. Cat. no. DD/561/0003 and DD/592/0009, remains of an earthenware cup and saucer with black transfer-printed May Flower pattern. (KARP photo.)

Figure 84. Cat. no. DD/561/0003, base of remains of an earthenware saucer with black maker’s mark: ‘MAY FLOWER (in banner)/ J. M. & Co’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 87. Cat. no. DD/581/0002, fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with black transfer-printed pattern of rosette flowers in a honeycomb pattern on the interior rim. (KARP photo.)

Figure 86. Cat. no. DD/581/0002, fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with black transfer-printed pattern of meanders and floral design on exterior. (KARP photo.)

197

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 88. Cat. no. DD/558/0015, fragment from an earthenware saucer decorated with purple transfer-printed pattern comprising a key fret at the rim, a purple band with twisted white ribbon inside, and a band of purple scrolls below. (KARP photo.)

Figure 89. Cat. no. DD/561/0002, fragment from an earthenware saucer decorated with purple transfer-printed pattern comprising a band of diamonds above a band of squares at the rim with interlaced ribbon and floral festoons. (KARP photo.)

Figure 90. Cat. no. DD/534/0017, rim fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with purple transfer-printed pattern comprising a meander pattern on exterior below band and ovoids at rim, both inside and outside. (KARP photo.)

Figure 91. Cat. no. A02XVer/123/0009, fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with purple transfer-printed slightly flown floral pattern. (KARP photo.)

198

Figures

Figure 92. Cat. no. A02XVer/087/0011, fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with purple transfer-printed pattern with leaves. (KARP photo.) Figure 93. Cat. no. DD/801/0007, base fragment from an earthenware saucer decorated with purple transfer-printed pattern with vine leaves and voluted teardrops. (KARP photo.)

Figure 94. Cat. no. DD/583/0011, fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with green transfer-printed pattern of linked bunches of flowers below linear background. (KARP photo.)

Figure 95. Cat. no. DD/599/0004, fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with green transfer-printed allover vegetal pattern. (KARP photo.)

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Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 97. Cat. no. DD/556/0025, fragment from an earthenware cup with brown transfer-printed pattern of voluted vegetal bands below a brown rim. (KARP photo.)

Figure 96. Cat. nos. DD/507.15/0119 and R/710/0015, remains from an earthenware cup and saucer decorated with a brown transfer-printed pattern of alternating white dots and tulip-shaped flowers in a brown band at rim, and a vegetal pattern below. (KARP photo.)

Figure 99. Cat. no. DD/553/0003, two rim fragments from an earthenware saucer decorated with a red transfer-printed pattern of a vegetal pattern with ribbon. (KARP photo.)

Figure 98. Cat. no. DD/582/0008, fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with a red transfer-printed pattern of a sailing boat in circular cartouche surrounded by coral/seaweed. (KARP photo.)

Figure 100. Cat. no. DD/811/0015, two rim fragments from an earthenware saucer decorated with a red transfer-printed pattern of triangles and stylised flowers and leaves. (KARP photo.)

200

Figures

Figure 101. Cat. no. DD/556/0024, base fragment from a ‘white and gold’ earthenware saucer showing decoration of tea-leaf pattern in well, maker’s mark ‘GREEN & CO LTD/ (church)’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 102. Cat. no. DD/556/0024 – base fragment from a ‘white and gold’ earthenware saucer with decoration of tea-leaf pattern, showing green maker’s mark ‘GREEN & CO LTD/ (church)’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 103. Cat. no. DD/572/0007, white earthenware cup base with black maker’s mark ‘PHOENIX WARE/ MADE IN ENGLAND/ T. F. & S. LTD’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 104. Cat. no. DD/570/0010, large fragment of an earthenware saucer decorated with blue transfer-printed Willow pattern. (KARP photo.)

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Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 106. Cat. no. DD/570/0010, profile of plate decorated with Willow pattern. (Drawing by Michael Hawkes from sketch by V. Esposito for KARP.)

Figure 105. Cat. no. DD/570/0010, large fragment of an earthenware saucer decorated with blue transfer printed Willow pattern, showing part of maker’s mark of R. H. & S. L. Plant Ltd: ‘[Tuscan] China/[MAD]E IN ENGLAND’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 108. Cat. no. DD/524/0002, near complete pink dyedbody earthenware cup with rouletted rim and fluted upper body. (KARP photo.)

Figure 107. Cat. no. DD/555/0009, fragment from an earthenware cup decorated with brown transfer-printed Wattle pattern. (KARP photo.)

202

Figures

Figure 110. Cat. no. DD/525/0008, near complete dark yellow dyed-body earthenware saucer, scalloped rim and slightly fluted upper section; black maker’s mark: ‘LABURNUM/ PETAL/ (rectangle frame containing sailing ship/ and) GRINDLEY/ ENGLAND’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 109. Cat. no. DD/522/0008, near complete dark yellow dyed-body earthenware cup with scalloped rim and slightly fluted upper section. (KARP photo.)

Figure 112. Cat. no. DD/555/0008, fragment from upper body and rim of a red-bodied earthenware teapot with black glaze and enamelled hand-painted pattern. (KARP photo.)

Figure 111. Cat. no. DD/822/0011, body and base fragments from a red-bodied earthenware teapot with brown glaze, with embossed base mark ‘ENGLAND’. (KARP photo.)

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Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 113. Cat. no. DD/805/0003, base fragment from a red-bodied earthenware teapot with black glaze with a gold maker’s mark: ‘S. JOHNSON … BRITANNIA POTTERY (in ring around figure of Britannia)/ No202195/ ENGLAND’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 114. Cat. no. DD/508.03/0025b, over half of a ‘white and gold’ bone china cup with straight flaring sides, decorated with gold line 20 mm below rim. Remains of green maker’s mark: ‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ MA[DE IN ENGLAND]’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 115. Cat. no. DD/576/0017, remains of a creambodied earthenware teapot showing decal and gilded floral decoration, with a green maker’s mark: ‘QUALITY (in banner)/ (dragon on globe) ARTHUR WOOD (in banner across globe)/ ENGLAND’ alongside an impressed mark: ‘ENGLAND/ 36’. (KARP photo.) Figure 116. Cat. no. DD/576/0017, base of a cream-bodied earthenware teapot with decal and gilded decoration, showing green maker’s mark: ‘QUALITY (in banner)/ (dragon on globe) ARTHUR WOOD (in banner across globe)/ ENGLAND’; an impressed mark alongside: ‘ENGLAND/ 36’. (KARP photo.)

204

Figures

Figure 118. Cat. no. DD/594/0008, remains of a ‘white and gold’ bone china cup, with green maker’s mark: ‘GRAFTON CHINA/ A B J (in knot)/ & SONS/ ENGLAND’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 117. Cat. no. DD/521/0005, remains of ‘white and gold’ bone china cup with olive-green maker’s mark: ‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ G.P & Co/ L./ MADE IN ENGLAND’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 120. Cat. no. DD/525/0005, remains of a ‘white and gold’ bone china saucer, with a gold tea-leaf pattern in well, showing green maker’s mark: ‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ G.P & Co/ L./ MADE IN ENGLAND’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 119. Cat. no. DD/525/0005, remains of a ‘white and gold’ bone china saucer decorated with gilt-edged rim and gold line 20 mm below rim, and gold tea-leaf pattern in well, with a maker’s mark: ‘GLADSTONE CHINA/ (crown)/ G.P & Co/ L./ MADE IN ENGLAND’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 121. Cat. no. DD/549/0005b, remains of a ‘white and gold’ bone china cup, with black maker’s mark: ‘PHOENIX/ ENGLISH/ CHINA’. (KARP photo.)

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Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 123. Cat. no. DD/572/0006, remains of a white bone china saucer with fluted body and rounded profile; radial ribbing and scalloped edge; with blue maker’s mark: ‘TUSCAN CHINA/ (winged crown)/ MADE IN ENGLAND’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 122. Cat. no. DD/510.09/0060, remains of a ‘white and gold’ bone china cup decorated with three gold lines 5–6 mm from rim, with black maker’s mark: ‘COLCLOUGH/ LONDON/ ENGLAND/ BONE CHINA’; and gold numbering, ‘150’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 125. Cat. no. DD/565/0010, remains of fine-walled white bone china cup with fluted ovoid body, no foot, inset base, showing olive-green maker’s mark: ‘TUSCAN CHINA/ (winged crown)/ MADE IN/ ENGLAND’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 124. Cat. no. DD/565/0010, remains of fine-walled white bone china cup with fluted ovoid body, no foot, inset base. (KARP photo.)

206

Figures

Figure 127. Cat. no. DD/570/0017, base from a ‘white and gold’ porcelain saucer with green maker’s mark: ‘Noritake/ (tree crest mark inside wreath)/ MADE IN JAPAN/ RADIANT’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 126. Cat. no. DD/540/0003, base from a ‘white and gold’ porcelain cup with tea-leaf pattern, showing an olivegreen maker’s mark: ‘VICTORIA/ (crown)/ Czecho-Slovakia’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 129. Cat. no. DD/576/0021, fragment from the base of a plain white porcelain saucer with a red base mark inside shield: ‘SUPERIOR/ QUALITY/ MADE IN JAPAN’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 128. Cat. no. DD/576/0020, remains of plain white porcelain saucer with red base mark: ‘CA (logo)/ JAPAN’. (KARP photo.)

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Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 130. Cat. no. DD/577/0004, fragment from base from a plain white porcelain cup with a turquoise base mark: ‘VICTORIA/ (crown)/ Czecho-Slovakia’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 131. Cat. no. DD/576/0038, remains of a straightsided, plain white earthenware cup with an ear-shaped handle. (KARP photo.)

Figure 132. Cat. no. DD/525/0007, fragment from an earthenware saucer with a pink and yellow floral decal pattern. (KARP photo.) Figure 133. Cat. no. DD/508.02/0015, remains of a straightsided, plain white bone china cup with an ear-shaped handle. (KARP photo.)

Figure 134. Cat. no. A02Ver/056/0099, fragment from bone china cup with red decaled decoration. (KARP photo.)

208

Figures

Figure 135. Cat. no. DD/555/0012, base and rim fragment from a ‘white and gold’ porcelain plate with a fluted and scalloped rim and base mark: ‘No. 27/ Australi[a]’. (KARP photo.)

Figure 136. Cat. no. DD/591/0003 remains of a ‘white and gold’ straight-sided and fine-walled porcelain cup with a voluted, ear-shaped ring handle with open bracket. (KARP photo.)

Figure 137. Cat. no. DD/822/0009, near complete ‘white and gold’ porcelain cup, ring handle with open bracket. (KARP photo.)

Figure 138. Cat. no. Y/602/0033, ear-shaped handle from a small porcelain cup, possibly a demitasse. (KARP photo.)

Figure 139. Cat. no. DD/534/0007, two rim fragments from a porcelain saucer decorated with blue mottled decal design. (KARP photo.)

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Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 141. Cat. no. DD/549/0015, four fragments from a porcelain bowl, possibly a sugar bowl, decorated with a red, blue and green Geisha Girl pattern. (KARP photo.)

Figure 140. Cat. no. DD/571/0001, fragments of a porcelain saucer decorated with a polychrome floral decal pattern of leaves and bluebells and gilded lines. (KARP photo.)

Figure 142. Cat. no. DD/516/0001, two fragments from a porcelain teapot decorated with a polychrome decal floral design and a gilded line at the rim. (KARP photo.)

Figure 143. Cat. no. DD/811/0020, fragments from an earthenware saucer with a pale yellow glaze and horizontal ridging. (KARP photo.)

Figure 144. Cat. no. DD/536/0013a, fragments from an earthenware cup with blurred blue transfer-printed Willow pattern. (KARP photo.)

210

Figures

Figure 145. Cat. no. DD/586/0027, remains of an earthenware saucer decorated with green transfer-printed pattern of daisy-like flowers, snowdrops and possibly a butterfly. (KARP photo.)

Figure 146. Cat. no. DD/513/0004, fragment from a bone china cup with a hand-painted floral decoration. (KARP photo.)

Figure 148. Cat. no. DD/809/0001, rim and handle fragment of a porcelain cup decorated with gilded lines and a green band at the rim. (KARP photo.)

Figure 147. Cat. no. DD/817/0002, large fragment of a porcelain cup decorated with a thick blue line at the rim. (KARP photo.)

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Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead?

Figure 149. Cat. no. DD/511.12/0055, near complete orangebodied, brown glazed earthenware teapot. (KARP photo.) Figure 150. Cat. no. DD/570/0022, large fragment from porcelain cup decorated with a polychrome decal floral design and a gilded line at the rim. (KARP photo.)

Figure 151. Cat. no. DD/566/0004, remains of a ‘white and gold’ porcelain cup with slightly flaring sides and a block handle. (KARP photo.)

212

Index bookkeepers, 124–26 passim; see also storekeepers bookkeeping records, of Kinchega Pastoral Estate: 43, 96, 129, 148; coffee-drinking apparatus, 100, 103, 138, 152; ‘Men’s Ledger’ of station employees, 125; tableware and teaware purchases, 33, 93, 96–108 passim, 118, 133–39 passim, 146 boundary riders, 27, 126 bowl sizes, 41 bowls, 40–41, 47, 50–63 passim, 97, 115, 117, 134, 137; see also bowl sizes; soup coupes; sugar b.; see also under glassware breakfast, 29, 39, 49, 102, 127, 130–31 passim; dishes, 37; sets, 49, 62, 88, 90, 113–14 passim, 136–38 passim, 141, 146, 152 (dinner or lunch sets, 48, 130, 144; or tea sets, 45, 71, 88, 118, 144); settings, 103, 133, 141; see also b. bowls; b. cups; b./ cheese plates breakfast bowls, 41 breakfast/cheese plates, 39–41, 45–52 passim, 58, 60, 63 breakfast cups, 41–42 passim, 78, 90, 102, 111–13 passim, 117–19 passim, 136, 138; cost, 100–102; see also next entry breakfast-sized cups, 95, 146 Britannia Pottery, see Johnson, S. British ceramics, 34–39 passim, 47, 93, 141, 144, 146, 149, 150; see also ‘England’/’made in England’ marks; transfer-printed patterns British Empire, 7, 13–15 passim, 18, 25, 43, 146 British Isles, 13, 19 British loyalty, see under Britishness; see also loyalty British persons: aristocracy, 16; citizens, 15; colonial, 19; descendants, 1, 15; homestead occupants, 2, 138; identities, 13, 14 bis, 19, 21, 22; migrants, 1; see also Anglo-Saxonism; European people; gentry British world, 9, 14–15 passim, 21, 42, 143, 154–56 passim; networks of, 25; parts of, 4, 151; see also Anglo-Saxonism; British Empire Britishness, 1, 3, 7, 9, 13–23, 32; adoption of, 145, 149; aspirations of, 123; etiquette, 13, 126, 145, 149, 152; loyalty, 16, 22, 146; manners, 13–19 passim, 22, 126, 152; meaning of, 155; reemergent, 104, 107, 129, 137, 140; social mores, 7, 9, 108, 145–46 passim, 149, 152; symbols of, 151, 155; white, 3, 21; see also middle class; Victorian period; working class Broken Hill, 32, 96, 108, 126–35 passim, 141; mining, 27, 29, 31, 123, 124, 133; society, 31–32, 129, 132, 138, 140, 145; retail suppliers, 96, 98, 100, 101, 133; shopping, 27; township, 27–31 passim, 196; travel, 27–31 passim, 108, 127–29 passim, 132, 135; see also ‘Silver City’; see also under railway transport Brooks, Alasdair, 21, 34–38 passim, 149, 150; Australian market, 93; illustrations, 46; Lake Innes Estate ceramics, 112, 115, 118 Brownfield & Sons, 46–48 buggies, 25, 29, 31, 127, 141 buggy boys, 124 bullock transport: carts, 100, 126; teams, 25; teamsters, 17; trains, 141; wagons, 3, 25, 27, 141 Burke, Robert O’Hara, 1 bush, 4, 16; clergymen, 28; hospitality, 128; legends, 15, 22; life, 17; mythologies, 15–19 passim, 22; picnics, 19; tea, 29, 152

12-sided tableware sets, 58–64 passim, 98, 99, 104, 132, 134, 140, 145

A

A. B. Jones & Sons, see Grafton-China Aboriginal people, 7, 28, 151; children, 151; communities, 1, 11; cultural assemblages, 152; origins, 2; populations, 1, 19; visitors, 28 accessibility, to ceramic market, 93–4, 103, 108 Adelaide, 2, 128; Bank, 129; business, 94, 96–99 passim; ceramic market, 130; newspapers, 10, 128–29 passim; transport to and from, 25–29 passim, 94, 96, 108, 124, 127, 141, 143; visitors, 127, 128, 132, 134; see also Port Adelaide afternoon tea, 18–21, 121, 131, 141, 145, 153; sets, 38, 39, 90 air travel, 27, 129 Albion pattern, 43, 45–46, 49, 63, 99, 114, 115, 130 Allison, Ronald, 124, 125 America, see under markets; see also North America Anglo-Saxonism, 3, 15, 16; culture, 150; identification, 21; see also Angloworld; British persons; Britishness Angloworld, 7, 14; see also Anglo-Saxonism Anthony Hordern & Sons Ltd, 39, 94, 138; trade catalogues, 34, 38, 40–42 passim, 58, 71, 94–107 passim, 133, 137 Appadurai, Arjun, 7–8, 155 aristocracy, 14, 15; British, 16; landed, 13 Asiatic Pheasant pattern, 43, 46, 49, 63, 99, 103, 114–16 passim, 130, 132 auctions, of ceramic wares, 93, 98, 100 Australian China & Glass Co., 100–102 passim, 136 Australian citizenship, 3 Australian Federation, 3, 15, 16, 138, 152 Australian identity, 15, 16 bis, 19, 22, 140 Australian made ceramics, 35–36, 81, 89

B

Balaklava Station, 125 band and line patterns, 36, 45, 48–49, 97, 100, 103; see also banded p.; dark blue banded and gilded p. banded patterns, 36; teawares (not ‘white and gold’), 86–89 passim, 101–102 passim, 105, 107, 119; see also band and line p. Barrier Ranges, 1, 2, 27, 29 Beaudry, Mary, 14, 21, 151 Bendigo pottery, 89 Berg, Maxine, on global history, 8 Beven, Albert Robert, residency, 125–26 Beven, Mrs Linda, 138 Beven, Peter, 127, 129, 137; sketch plan, 2, 3 Beven family, 125, 137; household, 126, 137 billabongs, 2, 125, 129, 130 Blairs, 72–74 passim, 86–87, 133, 136 blacksmith’s cottage, Lake Innes Estate, 112-19 passim Bohemian china, 95; see also Czechoslovakian porcelain; European porcelain

213

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? cream jugs, 38, 39 cream-bodied earthenware, 71–72, 86 Cribbs Lane, no. 4, The Rocks, 110, 111, 120 cricket matches, 129, 136, 140, 141, 146 Cuba pattern, 49, 51; set, 62–3, 99, 103–104, 117, 120, 132–35 passim, 140, 145, 147 Cumberland St., no. 128, The Rocks, 110, 120 cup handles, 65, 76, 106, 138; block handles, 82, 106; ear-shaped h., 68, 70, 72, 77–85 passim, 106; open bracket h., 82, 105, 106; ring h., 82, 84, 89, 95; see also vessel h. cup profiles, 82; everted rims, 66, 69, 70, 75–79 passim, 82–89 passim, 105–106 passim; flaring straight-sided, 65–67 passim, 70–82 passim, 86–89 passim, 95, 105–106 passim; rounded, 79; vertically straight-sided, 65–70 passim, 79–82 passim, 86, 88, 89, 106 cup shapes, relative to cost, 94–95, 105–106; see also cup profiles cup sizes, 40–41, 65–90, 94–95, 100–103 passim, 107, 111, 131, 138, 146; see also breakfast c.; coffee c. Czechoslovakian porcelain, 35; teawares, 43, 74–77, 86, 90, 136, 146; see also Bohemian china; Continental china; European porcelain

bushmen, 16, 17, 19, 153

C

Cable pattern, 45, 48–49 passim, 63, 100, 103, 114, 130 Cambridge, Mrs Ada, 19, 22, 28, 130, 153 camels, 26, 30, 141 Canada, 14, 19, 42, 94, 150; see also North America Canadians, 13 Carahers Lane, The Rocks: no. 1, 110, 113, 117–20 passim; no. 2, 111; no. 3, 110; no. 4, 110, 111, 120 Carter, Captain A. C., 27, 124–33 passim, 146 Carter, Mrs A. C., 129 Carter, Mrs Margaret (née Hayes), 26, 125, 128, 134, 135 cattle, 6, 7, 28; ‘cattle king’, 28; stations, 27 ceramic analysis methods, see c. dating m.; classification approaches; collection sampling m.; consumption-orientated approach ceramic dating methods, 10, 34–37, 149 Chantilly pattern, 117 cheese plates, see breakfast/cheese p. Chelsea Grape/Chelsea Sprig pattern, 68–69, 118, 130 children, 7, 31, 90, 123, 124; Aboriginal, 151; Beans, 112; Beven, 125; ceramics, 37; Delprat, 28; education, 14, 28, 127; Files, 126; Hayes, 125, 128; Hughes, 127, 129; McLennan, 125; Phillips, 123–24, 127; Reid, 28–29; rules, 16; table manners, 149; travel, 30, 153; White, 30 ‘Chinaman’s hut’, 2, 3, 5, 85, 125, 138; see also gardener’s hut Chinese gardener, 125 Chinese gardener’s hut, 85; see also ‘Chinaman’s hut’ Chinese patterns, 46, 49 Chinese people, origins, 2 Chinese porcelain, 27, 35, 85, 151 Christmas, 28, 31; balls, 28, 30; guests, 129, 138 class, see middle c.; working c. classification approaches, 7, 9, 33–34, 43, 149, 150, 155 coaches, 2, 27, 141; see also stagecoaches coffee, 10, 103; coffee drinking, 19, 29, 102, 119, 138, 152; coffee pots, 100, 103, 138; coffee sets, 114, 119, 131, 152; status, 138; see also next entry coffee cups, 41–42, 69, 90, 95, 100–103 passim, 138, 152; see also coffee Colclough China, 72–74 passim, 86–87, 102, 136 collection sampling methods, 3, 33, 38, 102, 107, 121, 150 Colley, Linda, 13 colonisation, European, 1, 6 colonists, European, 93, 144, 151 coloured glazes, 71, 72, 88, 89, 90, 137 complementary sets: definitions, 38, 110; tablewares, 45–52 passim, 56–63 passim, 103, 104, 109, 115–16; teawares, 65–71 passim; 79–80 passim, 83, 85–90 passim, 109, 119, 130–31, 137 Conservatorium of Music site (Sydney), 103; see also New South Wales Government House consumption-orientated approach, 34, 44, 148, 150 Continental china, 95; see also Czechoslovakian porcelain; European porcelain convicts, 22, 111; women, 15, 18 cooks, 123, 125; female, 124, 125; male, 124 Country Women’s Association of Australia, 137 coupes, 41, 97; see also soup coupes cowboys, 124

D

dark-blue banded and gilded pattern, 49–53, 132; set, 43, 58, 62– 64, 97–99 passim, 104, 134–37 passim, 140, 145–46 passim, 149; see also under Meakin, J. & G. Darling River, 1–2, 25, 28, 126–28 passim; communities, 27, 139; navigation, 26, 31, 108; trade, 27; see also river steamers decals: decoration, 71–72, 78–81 passim, 85–86, 102, 133, 136–37 passim, 145, 152; process, 36; sets, 43, 87, 90 decoration types, relative to cost, 94–95 decorative pattern types; see also band and line patterns; banded patterns; decals; gilt patterns; relief-moulded decoration; transfer-printed patterns Delprat, Mrs Guillaume, 29, 31, 32, 126, 138, 140; see also under children department stores, 39, 94, 98, 143; see also under Broken Hill; see also Anthony Hordern & Sons Ltd; Harris, Scarfe, Ltd descendants, xvi, 10; see also under British persons dessert/pudding bowls, 40 dessert/pudding plates, 40, 45–49 passim, 53, 58, 60, 96, 97 dessert sets, 114 diet, 149–50, 155; change over time, 97, 145 Dilke, Charles, 13 dinner plates, 38–41 passim, 46, 49–63 passim, 96–98 passim, 114–17 passim, 135, 143, 151 dinner sets, in Kinchega invoice books, 96–98 passim Dolly’s Creek, 115, 125; diggers and families, 22; households, 112, 113, 115–20 passim domesticity, 19, 22, 111, 153 droughts, 3, 26, 141 ‘dumping’, of British ceramics on Australian market, 34, 93 dumps, see refuse/rubbish disposal sites dyed-body wares, 34; tablewares, 61–62, 94, 137, 146; teapots, 71–72, 86, 90; teawares (other), 70, 71, 86, 88, 102, 106

E

education, European, 14 eggcups, 61–62 passim, 97 Elsey Station, 30, 31, 151

214

Index Empire ware, 51–53, 97–99 passim, 132, 134 employees, of Kinchega Station: 125, 126, 141; see also boundary riders; cooks; cowboys; gardeners; grooms; housekeepers; jackaroos; station workers; storekeepers; see also managers; overseers enamel and tin vessels, 31, 33, 96, 98, 108; cups/mugs, 31, 33, 100–102 passim, 107, 131, 136; plates, 31, 96, 136; teapots, 90 enamelled decoration, 72 England, 13, 18, 28, 42, 144; ‘England’/‘made in England’ marks, 35, 36, 51–61 passim, 67, 70–75 passim, 89, 94, 97, 133 etiquette, 13, 16–19 passim, 22, 126, 133, 139, 145, 146, 149, 152 Eton College pattern, 116 European colonisation, 1, 6 European education, 14 European nations, 13 European people, 14, 15, 25, 155; ancestry, 14; colonists, 93, 144, 151; explorers, 1; identity, 15; occupants, 25, 63, 151; origins, 2, 155; settlers, 154; women, 26, 153; see also European colonisation European porcelain, 35, 43; teawares, 95, 133; see also Bohemian china; Continental china; Czechoslovakian porcelain European settlement, 7, 11, 16, 25, 31–32 passim, 99, 126; outback communities, 27 European Union, 156 explorers, European, 1

genteel display, 32, 87, 131, 152, 153, 155 genteel tea drinking, 22, 72, 87–90 passim, 102, 107–108 passim, 119, 131–33 passim, 136, 138, 145, 147 gentility, definition, 9, 14–23 passim; demonstration of, 131, 147, 153, 156; levels of, 42, 120; 121, 137, 141, 144; see also preceding 3 entries; see also under Hayes, Sarah; matching sets; middle class; social performance; Victorian period gentlemen, 16, 17, 128 gentry, 15, 17, 31; see also aristocracy Germany, 15, 21 Gill, Nicholas, 16, 153 gilt patterns, 36; on tablewares, 51–54 passim; 57, 59; on teawares, 43, 68, 95, 105, 118, 131; see also relief-moulded decoration; ‘tea-leaf p.; ‘white and gold’ teawares Gladstone China, 72–74 passim, 86–87 passim, 102, 105, 136 glassware, 3, 32, 33, 94, 107, 131, 144; bowls, 44; glass of water, 28; seconds, 42; tablewares, 44, 97; teawares, 100 global history, 7, 8, 11, 154–56; see also Berg, Maxine Gloucester St., no. 95, The Rocks, 110, 111, 120 goldfields, 25; Forest Creek, 17, 22, 37, 131, 145; Mt Margaret, 25–26; see also Dolly’s Creek Government House site, Sydney, see New South Wales Government House Grafton China, 72, 73, 74, 86, 133 gravy boats, 40, 42, 51–52, 63, 97, 135; see also sauce b. Gray, Annie, 18–22 passim, 37, 90, 103, 121, 144, 153–54 passim ‘Grecian White’, 60, 99, 104; see also 12-sided tableware sets Green & Co. Ltd, 70, 71 Grieve, Miss Helena Una: diary, 28, 29, 147; photographs, 20, 30, 130, 153; travels, 29–32 passim, 126–28, passim, 140, 153 Griggs, Peter, 18, 19, 153 Grindley, W. H. & Co., 70, 71, 106, 107, 137; see also Laburnum Petal pattern grooms, 123, 124, 125 Gunn, Mrs Aeneas, 17, 30–32 passim, 139, 147, 152; tea-drinking, 18, 31, 131, 138; teawares, 31, 143, 151, 152 gymkhanas, 27

F

fabric type, relative to cost, 94, 101, 105 families, see under managers; middle class; overseers; pastoralists; working class; see also individual family names Farrow cottage, Port Adelaide, 111, 114–19 passim Faust & Co., Menindee, 100 Federal pattern, 52, 98–99 passim, 104, 146 Federation, see Australian Federation femininity, 16, 19, 135–41 passim, 152–53 Files, Harry, 126 Files, Mrs, 138 Files family, 137; household, 137, 138; see also children First World War, 3, 14–15 passim, 22, 152 flaws (manufacturing), 42–43, 51, 65, 88, 105, 107, 150 flooding, 2, 26, 28, 29, 124 Florence pattern, 117 flour, 18, 143 fluted tablewares, 98 fluted teawares, 70–71 passim, 74–75, 83, 86–87, 90, 95, 102, 106– 107 passim, 135–36 passim Forester, Thomas & Sons Ltd, see T. F. & S. Ltd French cuisine, 132, 135, 145 French people, 13

H

hand-painted bone china, 89, 104–105, 145 hand-painted earthenware, 71–72 hand-painted porcelain, 117 handles, see cup h.; vessel h. Hardy, Bobby, 123, 127 Harris, Scarfe, Ltd, 96–102 passim, 136; trade catalogues, 42, 60, 94 hawkers, 26–27, 94 Hayes, Arthur, 26 bis, 125, 128, 134, 135, 139; see also under children Hayes, Mrs Bertha, 26, 125, 128, 136 Hayes, Owen, 125, 128, 136, 146 Hayes, Sarah, 33, 38; Australian codes of gentility, 33, 44, 121; Viewbank study, 112, 115–16, 119 Hayes family, 125, 128, 134, 135; household, 134, 136 heirloom vessels, 90, 99, 100, 108, 144 Honeysuckle pattern, 65–66, 105 horses, 25, 27, 127; see also buggies; buggy boys; coaches; picnic races; stagecoaches; wagonettes hospitality: acts, 18, 107; Australian codes, 9, 13, 18, 31, 33, 104, 109, 140–41 passim; British codes, 16, 32; changing codes,

G

G. P. & Co. Ltd, see Gladstone-China gardener’s hut, 33; see also ‘Chinaman’s hut’ gardeners, 123–25 passim Garver, Linda, 21, 149 Geisha Girl pattern, 85, 135 gender, 19; gendered practices, 11, 14, 153–56 passim; gendered performance, 17, 19, 21, 131; gendered power dynamics, 14; transcended, 22 genteel dining standards, 30–31, 37, 44, 64, 103–104 passim, 116, 121, 130–32, 139–40 passim, 145, 147

215

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? Kinchega Station, 1, 2, 25, 27; see also employees Knight, Jessica, 18–22 passim, 90, 121, 153

145–47 passim, 152; inexpensive forms, 121; open-handed, 22, 145; outback, 16–19 passim, 29, 31–32 passim, 123–35 passim, 152; standards, 149; to strangers, 28, 144; see also under bush hotel ware, 35 housekeepers, 121, 125, 126 Hughes, Alfred, 27 Hughes, Chris, 124 Hughes, E. Gwynne, 2, 3, 117, 125–29 passim, 149 Hughes, Edgar, 27, 124, 128 Hughes, Herbert Bristow (H. B.), 2, 123, 124, 127–32 passim; death, 127; leaseholder, 2, 3, 26 Hughes, Herbert White, 124 Hughes, Howard White, 27, 124, 127, 130–33 passim, 139 Hughes, Laura Sophia, 124 Hughes family, 2, 3, 27, 123, 127–38 passim

L

labourers’ hut, Lake Innes Estate, 112, 115, 117 Laburnum Petal pattern, 70, 71, 86, 91, 106, 137; see also Grindley, W. H. & Co. Lace pattern, 117 Lake, Marilyn, 15, 21, 129 Lake Elder Station, 28–31 passim, 147 Lake Innes Estate, 112–21 passim; see also blacksmith’s cottage; labourers’ hut; see also under servants’ households; servants’ quarters Lake Tandou, 126 Lake Topar, 25 Lassetters’ trade catalogues, 52, 94, 98 Lawrence, Susan, 4, 14–22 passim, 38, 110–12 passim, 115–19 passim, 143, 150–51 Lawson, Henry, 16 Lewis, Mrs Ann, see Mrs Ann Lewis’s boarding house Lily of the Valley pattern, 58, 59 Little Lon site, 113 London sites, 43, 45, 108, 123 loyalty, imperial, 21; see also under Britishness Lydon, Jane, 8, 110–13 passim, 117, 119

I

identity, 7, 13; class, 14; colonial, 19; construction, 43; cultural, 8, 19, 140; English, 18; indigenous, 19; imperial, 22; national, 3; studies of, 19; see also Australian identity; see also under British persons; European people ‘Imperial White’, 60; see also 12-sided tableware sets; ‘Grecian White’ indigenous people, 151; ancestry, 14; identities, 19; populations, 11, 13; women, 14; see also Aboriginal people ‘institutionalised’ sets/settings, 108; of tablewares, 99, 104, 134, 140, 146; of teawares, 105, 131, 145, 146 institutionalised social values/standards, 107–108, 156; of hospitality, 145, 152; of sexism, 14; of tea drinking, 102 Ireland, 13 Ironstone china, 34–35 passim, 95, 101; in maker’s mark, 53, 61

M

Maiden, Sandra, 25, 27, 125, 127 mail order catalogues, see trade catalogues maker’s marks, 34–37 passim; see also individual makers’ names (e.g. Brownfield & Sons; Empire ware; Meakin; etc.) managers, of Kinchega Station: 2, 27, 97, 123–28 passim, 128, 140, 144; families, 98–99 passim, 124, 127, 131, 139, 145; households, 108, 126, 133, 145, 146; see also Kars Station manners, 13, 21, 156; Australian, 16, 17, 28, 132, 139, 141, 144, 145; colonial, 16; table, 18, 146, 149; see also etiquette; see also under Britishness; Victorian period markets: access to, 6–7 passim, 10, 25, 103, 120, 137, 143; American ceramic, 34, 37, 42, 93; Australian, 16, 145; Australian ceramic, 34–37 passim, 42, 76, 93–94, 144; labour and capital m., 8; world m., 21; see also under Adelaide; Melbourne; seconds; Sydney masculinity, 16–19 passim, 22, 131, 153 matching sets, 109, 120–21 passim; definitions, 37–38, 45, 103, 110, 113; indicators of gentility, 33, 131, 144, 149;tablewares, 48–49, 54, 56, 62, 64, 100, 115–21 passim, 130; teawares, 65– 75 passim, 117, 119 materialism, see new m. May Flower, 66–67 McKay cottage, Port Adelaide, 111, 114–18 passim McLennan, Donald, 125 McLennan, Jim, 125, 129 McLennan, Mrs, 128, 136 Meakin, J. & G., 37, 51–54, 58, 60–62, 106; centenary, 58–59, 134; feather pattern, 52–54, 56, 61; gilded dark blue-banded, 51– 52, 62, 97–99 passim, 132, 134 meat, supply and demand, 39, 97, 133, 134–35, 149; see also mutton meat dishes, 39, 40, 97, 134; see also platters Melbourne, 15, 17, 28, 130, 139; bishop, 112; department stores, 94; Little Lon site, 113; markets, 35; society, 17, 112

J

J. & G. Meakin, see Meakin, J. & G. J. M. & Co., 66 jackaroos, 29, 126 Japan, 35; ‘Japan’/’made in Japan’ marks, 35, 56–58 passim, 75–77, 86; see also next entry Japanese ceramics: ‘china’, 95; earthenware tablewares, 35, 56, 58, 94, 97, 146; porcelain teawares, 35, 43, 74–77, 85–87 passim, 90, 95, 97, 102, 136; see also preceding entry, and next entry Japanese designs, 36, 46, 49, 75 Johnson, Matthew, 19, 151 Johnson, S., 71 Johnson Bros, 58, 60, 61, 71–72 Jones, A. B. & Sons, see Grafton-China jugs, 35, 37–38, 44, 114; see also cream j.; milk j.; water j.

K

Kars Station, 27, 96, 127, 128; bookkeeper, 125; cottage, 103; homestead, 100, 126, 129; manager’s household, 97, 103, 108, 123, 124, 136, 138; overseer, 125 Kidman, Sydney, 28, 29, 147 Kinchega Estate, see Kinchega Pastoral Estate Kinchega National Park, 2, 3, 126, 150 Kinchega Pastoral Estate (or Kinchega Estate), 1–3, 99, 104–108 passim, 132; homesteads, 96–103 passim, 139, 145; households, 138, 145; leaseholders, 26, 123, 145; managers, 123, 126; overseers, 125, 126; stations, 27, 126; see also bookkeeping records; employees

216

Index O

Menindee Lakes, 1, 27, 31, 127 Menindee township, 1, 143; shopping, 96, 100, 136; social life, 27, 129; townspeople, 127; travel to, 25–27, 108, 127–29 passim, 133–37 passim, 141; see also under railway transport micro-archaeology, 1, 7, 9, 11, 143, 148, 155–56 microhistories, 8–11 passim, 22, 152, 154 middle class, 13–15, 18, 21, 37, 94, 145; Australian, 16, 104; consumers, 42; display, 64; etiquette, 149, 152; families, 107, 144; gentility, 18, 33, 37, 103, 107, 109, 140; households, 10, 104, 109, 112–21 passim, 133; men, 153; readers, 13; reformers, 14; settings, 131; standards, 108, 130–39 passim, 146–47; upper working class, 10, 15, 139; visitors, 130; wealth, 22; women, 14, 19, 154; see also Britishness; gentility; manners; Victorian period migrants, 13, 151; see also under British persons milk jugs, 37–38, 100, 101, 132 Mímisson, Kristján, 8–9, 154 minimum numbers of vessels, see MNVs mining, 1; communities, 4, 17, 26, 112, 115, 119; households, 116, 120; industry, 4, 22, 123, 127;sites, 43, 121, 143; see also under Broken Hill Minton shape, 72, 79, 95, 105–106 mismatched sets, 18, 37, 99–100 passim; settings, 130; of tablewares, 103–104, 110, 113, 120; of teawares, 18, 85–86, 107 MNVs, 38, 39; see also individual tables morality, 14, 16; guardians of, 13, 16, 153 Mordern Station, 29, 127 mores, see social mores; see also under Britishness motor cars, 27, 31, 126, 129, 132, 134, 137, 141, 145; see also next entry motorised transport, 3; see also preceding entry moulded decoration, see relief-moulded d. Mount Gipps, 27 Mount Murchison, 25, 26, 28 Mrs Ann Lewis’s boarding house, The Rocks, 111, 113–14, 117, 119, 120 mugs, 29, 78, 101, 118; see also under enamel and tin vessels Mulculca Station, 27, 96–98 passim, 101, 125; homestead, 128 mutton, 29, 130, 149 mythologies: Labour, 15; outback, 9, 16; see also under bush

Old Kinchega Homestead refuse site/rubbish dump, 3, 5–6, 33, 38, 90, 131, 136, 150; see also refuse/rubbish disposal sites oral history, 3; evidence, 1, 143, 152; sources, 10, 123, 129, 147, 148 Orser, Charles, 9, 154 overseers, of Kinchega Station: 2, 26, 125–26, 128, 140, 146–47 passim; cottage, 124; families, 98–99, 108, 128, 129, 134–39 passim, 146; households, 107–108, 123, 134, 146; residences, 100, 137, 138, 141, 145; see also under Kinchega Pastoral Estate overstocking, 3, 123

P

Pallal Station, 25, 30 pastoral industry, 1, 7, 11, 17, 28, 117, 153–54, 156; see also pastoralism; wool industry pastoral stations, 143; Aboriginal people on, 151; in west Darling, 2, 29, 123, 153; social life, 28, 31, 126, 130 pastoralism, 16, 17, 27, 141, 152–54 passim; see also pastoral industry pastoralists, 25, 28, 129, 154; families, 31, 123; in west Darling region, 1, 26, 123, 129, 140–41, 145; social status, 17, 112, 151; trainees, 29, 139; wives, 7, 10, 31, 139 Paterson, Alistair, 25, 109, 143 Paterson, Banjo, 16 patterns, see individual patterns and pattern names (e.g. Albion p.; Asiatic Pheasant p.; dark-blue banded and gilded p.; Lily of the Valley p.) pearl ware, 34 performance, see social p. Phelan, Michael, 125; occupancy, 134 Phelan, Mrs Alice Margaret, 125, 128–29 passim, 135, 136, 140 bis Phillips, Henry T., 123; family, 124, 127, 130; see also under children Phoenix/Phoenix Ware, 70–73 passim, 78, 79, 86, 133, 136 picnic races, 30, 129; see also race meetings Plant, R. H. & S. L. Ltd, 71 plate profiles, 45, 48, 52, 54, 58, 61, 71; chronological sequence, 36–37, 46, 47 plate sizes, 39–41, 46–62 passim, 97, 98, 113, 134, 143, 149; plates, see preceding 2 entries and breakfast/cheese p.; dessert/ pudding p.; dinner p.; soup p.; supper p. platters, 46–51 passim, 58, 63, 97, 103, 115–16 passim, 132–34; definitions, 39–42 passim; see also meat dishes porcellaneous tablewares, 43, 143 Port Adelaide, sites, 48, 111–12, 114–20 passim, 139, 149 potters’ marks, 148; see also maker’s marks and individual manufacturers Pountney & Co. Ltd, 49 Priory pattern, 115, 118 Procter, George & Co. Ltd, see Gladstone China profiles, see cup p; plate p.; saucer p. pubs, 27, 31, 112 pudding bowls, see dessert/pudding b. pudding plates, see dessert/pudding p.

N

nationalism, Australian, 16 nations, European, 13 Netley Station, 125, 127–29 passim New Kinchega Homestead, 2 new materialism, 7–8, 148 New South Wales Government House, Sydney, 103, 111–12, 114–21 passim; see also under servants’ households; servants’ quarters New South Wales Heritage Act, 2 New Zealand, 19, 93, 150 New Zealanders, 13 ‘Nippon’, 35, 86 Nippon Koshitsu Toki Co., 52, 56 Nocatunga Station, 27 Noritake, 35, 36, 75–77, 86–87 North America, 13, 18, 34–37 passim; market, 42, 93; sites, 37, 38, 148; stores, 43; see also Canada; United States; see also under markets

Q

Quebec St., no. 15, Port Adelaide, 111, 114–18 passim Queen’s pattern, 116 Queensland, 28; border, 1; cattle stations, 27

217

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? R

sets: compositional change over time, 104, 108, 149; see also 12-sided s.; breakfast s.; coffee s.; complementary s.; dessert s.; dinner s., in Kinchega invoice books; ‘institutionalised’; matching s.; mismatched s.; supper s.; tableware s., definitions of; teaware s., definitions of; tête à tête s.; see also under afternoon tea; Cuba pattern; dark-blue banded and gilded pattern; decals; relief-moulded decoration settlers, 19, 103: colonial, 4, 14; see also under European people shape of vessels, relative to cost, 94–5, 105–6 Shaw, Mary, 16, 17, 28–32 passim, 147 Shaw, Oliphant, 29, 32 Shaw family, 17, 28–29, 32, 139, 140, 147 Shaw homestead, 29, 140; see also Yancannia Station shearers, 108, 128; kitchen, 29, 153; quarters, 16, 97; tablewares, 97–98 passim, 140, 146; tea, 103 sheep, 2, 6–7, 28; sheep camps, 1; sheep’s heads, 129; sheep stations, 26, 97 shopping: in Broken Hill, 27; practices, 96; west Darling region, 143 ‘Silver City’, 27, 29; auctions, 98, 100; Comet, 27; see also Broken Hill Silverton, 27, 31; see also rail transport silverware, 32, 90, 95, 132; tea services, 21, 151 singularisation, 8–9; see also micro-archaeology; microhistory sizes, of vessels, see vessel s. ‘slab’ huts, 2, 3, 5, 33, 131 social mores, 4, 7, 10–11, 31; Australian, 9, 13, 17, 123, 126, 130, 143, 145; changing, 141, 145, 156; socio-cultural, 1; see also under Britishness social performance, 9, 13, 25, 32; gendered, 17, 19, 21; genteel, 16, 18, 21–22 passim, 32–33 passim, 131, 144, 147, 153 soup bowls, 40–41, 52, 53, 56, see also soup coupes soup coupes, 40–41, 60, 63, 134, 135; see also coupes soup plates, 38, 41, 49, 53, 57–63 passim, 97–98 passim, 103, 115, 120, 132–35 passim, 138, 145, 149 soup tureens, 30, 40, 114, 133, 139 South Africa, 14, 19, 150 South Africans, 13 Spencer-Wood, Suzanne, 7, 14, 119, 152 SPL (maker’s mark), 71 sponge-printed patterns, 65–66, 69 sprigged patterns, 95, 101, 105; see also Chelsea Grape/Chelsea Sprig p. squatters, 6, 17, 30; decent, 22; hospitality by, 145, 152; in Darling region, 93; uncouth, 17, 153 stagecoaches, 3, 123; see also coaches station workers, 2, 30, 31, 153; living standards, 135–37 passim, 141; residences, 2, 33, 123; supplies, 97–98 passim, 102–104 passim, 136, 143; table settings, 98, 104, 108, 140, 146; tablewares and teawares, 107, 135, 138, 151 storekeepers, 96, 123, 125; see also bookkeepers Sturt Meadows Station, 28, 29 sugar, 18, 143 sugar bowls, 39, 85–86 passim, 100–101 passim, 118, 132, 135 sugar pots, 22 Summer Flower pattern, 116 ‘Superior Quality’ (Japanese ceramics), 75–77 passim, 86–87 supper plates, 39–41 passim, 46, 48, 58, 63, 114–15 passim, 129, 143 supper sets, 63 Swinnertons, 58–59, 61–62, 137, 146

R. H. & S. L. Plant Ltd, see Plant, R. H. & S. L. Ltd rabbits, 3, 132 race meetings, 27; see also picnic races Radiant pattern, 75–76 railway transport, 3, 25–31 passim, 127–29 passim, 132, 134, 137, 141, 143, 145; Broken Hill, 27, 29, 96, 108, 127–29, 132, 134, 141–45 passim; electric, 27, 126, 134, 141; freight costs, 96; Menindee, 27, 108, 128, 134, 137, 141–45 passim; Silverton, 27 Ramsay-Laye, Elizabeth, 17, 18, 22, 37, 119, 131 refuse/rubbish disposal sites, 103, 111–12 passim, 118, 119; see also OKH refuse site Reid family, 28, 139; see also under children Reid, T., of Broken Hill, 101 Reid, Will, 29 Reid, William James, 28–29 relief-moulded decoration, 52, 97, 99, 104, 137–38 passim, 141; dating, 36; fan-and-scallop pattern, 54–55; feather pattern, 52–54; gilded, 43; sets, 61–64 passim, 99, 104, 132–35 passim, 145, 146; shell pattern, 56; various, 56–59 respectability: definitions, 9, 14–16 passim, 44; domestic, 22; see also under Victorian period; working class retail suppliers, see Anthony Hordern & Sons Ltd; Australian China & Glass Co.; Broken Hill; Faust & Co.; Harris Scarfe, Ltd; Reid, T.; Wood, G. & Son Co. Ltd Rhine pattern, 43; tablewares, 45–50 passim, 62, 99–100 passim, 103, 114–16 passim, 130, 132, 137, 139; teawares, 117–18 river steamers, 1, 3, 25–26, 31, 94, 123–32 passim, 141, 143; trade on, 27, 100 Rockingham glaze, 71, 89 Rocks, see The Rocks rubbish dumps, see refuse/rubbish disposal sites Russell, Penelope, 15–22 passim, 139, 152

S

salad bowls, 40, 41 sauce boats, 97, 135; see also gravy boats; sauce tureens sauce tureens, 40, 97; see also sauce boats saucer profiles: everted rims, 66, 69, 75–86 passim; flaring, 70, 79–85 passim; flatter inner, 77, 85; rounded, 79–83 passim Scotland, 13, 67 second-hand purchases, 46, 49, 93, 98–100 passim, 108, 116, 131 Second World War, 125, 129, 137, 152 seconds, 42, 105, 150; markets, 42–43, 93, 105, 144; quality, 65; teawares, 88 semi-rural contexts, 139; archaeological sites, 44, 109; households, 6; see also semi-urban areas and next entry semi-rural counterparts, 134 semi-urban areas, 4, 25; archaeological sites, 10; see also semirural contexts ‘separate spheres’ ideologies, 13 servants, 17, 18, 22, 112, 114, 118, 119, 125 servants’ households: at Government House, 114, 116; on Lake Innes Estate, 112–16 passim, 121 servants’ quarters: at Government House, 103, 119, 120; on Lake Innes Estate, 111–17 passim, serving bowls, 50, 63 serving dishes, 39–42 passim, 46–55 passim, 58–63 passim, 105, 113–16 passim, 134–35, 149; see also meat dishes; platters

218

Index Sydney: businesses, 35, 39, 94–98 passim, 138; ceramics market, 93, 94, 130; consumers, 105; sites, 43, 45, 48, 139; transport from, 25, 27, 30, 108, 128, 134, 141–45 passim; see also New South Wales Government House; The Rocks

urban populations, 17, 18, 43; communities, 15, 16; counterparts, 17, 19, 94, 134, 140, 153; society, 16, 18, 21, 22, 153; life, 29 urban table settings, 103 urban Victoria, 28

T

V

T. F. & S. Ltd, 71; see also Phoenix/Phoenix Ware tableware sets, definitions, 38 Tarella Station, 29, 30 Tea Leaf pattern, 36, 71, 73, 75, 78 teapot sizes, 41–42, 72, 86, 89–90 teapots, 22, 38–39, 90, 103, 132; at Dolly’s Creek, 112; at New South Wales Government House, 118; earthenware, 43, 71– 72, 86–90 passim, 112, 133, 136, 137; in bookkeeping records, 100, 103; Mrs Gunn’s, 25, 31; porcelain, 43, 85, 135, 137; see also teapot sizes teaware sets, definitions, 38–9 telephones, 3, 27, 29 terminology, of vessels, 34, 39–41 tête à tête sets, 38, 65, 69, 74, 85, 90 passim, 107–108 passim, 130–31, 135 The Rocks, Sydney, 36, 103–104, 110, 113–21 passim; households, 113, 117; see also Carahers Lane; Cribbs Lane; Cumberland St.; Gloucester St.; Mrs Ann Lewis’s boarding house tin vessels, see enamel and tin vessels Tolarno Station, 129 trade catalogues: Australian, 1, 10, 34–43 passim, 89, 93–108 passim, 109, 134, 135, 143; see also Lassetters’ trade catalogues; see also under Anthony Hordern & Sons Ltd; Harris, Scarfe, Ltd ‘trade mark’, 36 tradesmen, 16 transfer-printed patterns: common on Australian sites, 99; common in 19th century, 43; dating of motifs, 36, 37, 39; oldfashioned, 133, 138; relative costs and value, 42, 43, 103–108 passim; see also individual pattern names (e.g. Albion p.; Asiatic Pheasant p.; Cable p.; Cuba p.; etc.) transport: accessibility, 102; changing conditions/systems, 25–27, 108, 123, 132, 137–41 passim, 144–45 passim; and communication systems, 3, 14, 31, 108, 126, 156; costs, 96, 105; difficulties, 4, 6, 30, 144; of goods, 13, 25–27 passim, 139– 44 passim; of people, 27, 30, 126–29 passim, 141, 147, 152, 154; opportunities, 31, 127, 147, 154, 155; see also air travel; buggies; bullock transport; camels; horses; motor cars; railway transport; river steamers; see also under Adelaide; Broken Hill; Sydney; west Darling region tureen stands, 42 tureens, 42, 97, 114; see also sauce t.; soup t.; tureen stands; vegetable t. Tuscan China, 42, 70–71, 74–75, 87, 90, 102, 106 twelve-sided tableware sets, see 12-sided tableware sets Two Temples pattern, 43, 49–50, 113, 117

vegetable tureens, 40, 41 vessel handles: wire, 19, 29; serving dishes, 40, 50, 59; teapots, 72; see also cup h. vessel sizes, 39–42 passim, 63, 113–15 passim, 149; see also bowl s.; breakfast sized cups; cup s.; plate s.; teapot s. Victoria: colony of, 17, 93; goldfields, 22, 25, 112, 143; rural settlements, 28, 32, 112–14; rural sites, 48; social circles, 17 Victoria China, 74–77 passim, 86–87 Victorian period: class system, 33, 144; ceramics, 39; dining standards, 130, 140; etiquette, 146, 152; genteel performance, 144, 153; gentility, 9, 14, 37, 104, 107, 123, 144, 155; ideologies, 9; manners, 141, 144, 152; reformers, 14; respectability, 104, 107, 123, 140; table settings, 37, 107, 108, 145, 149; see also Britishness; middle class; working class Viewbank, 112–21 passim, 132, 147, 151 visitors, 28, 31–32, 121, 123; Aboriginal, 28; Christmas guests, 138; to Elsey Station, 31, 152; to Government House, Sydney, 118; to Kinchega National Park, 3; to Lake Elder Station, 29; to Lake Innes Estate, 112; to Old Kinchega Homestead, 2, 10, 27, 126–41, 143–49 passim, 152–53; to Pallal Station; to Yancannia Station, 29; urban, 145, 155; see also under middle class

W

W. H. Grindley & Co., see Grindley, W. H. & Co. wagonettes, 29, 30 Wales, 13, 18, 21 Wallace, Mrs Matilda, 28–31 passim, 127, 131, 138, 139, 147 water jugs, 38 Waterhouse, Richard, 17–18 Wattle pattern, 70–71, 86, 90, 105–107 passim, 133 Wellington St., no. 28, Port Albert, 113, 116, 118 west Darling region, 1–3, 29, 94; shopping, 143; social life, 28, 30, 31, 123, 147; transport and communication systems, 9, 25–26, 31, 126, 139, 147; see also under pastoralists; pastoral stations wheat-ear pattern, 59, 95 White Cliffs, 1, 28, 31, 125 white granite, 34, 35, 95, 104 White, Mrs Myrtle Rose, 29–30, 31, 127, 139, 140, 147; family, 139; see also under children ‘white and gold’ teawares, 86–90 passim, 102, 105–108 passim, 119, 131–41 passim, 145–46 passim, 149, 154; bone china, 72–73, 78–80; earthenware, 70–71, 76, 78; in bookkeeping records, 110–12; porcelain, 74–76, 80–83 whiteware, 34, 94–5, 99, 104 Wilcannia, 26–28 passim, 127 Willow pattern, 43, 121, 146; tablewares, 45–46, 49, 63, 99, 113– 18 passim, 130, 132, 137; teapots, 42; teawares, 70–71, 86–90 passim, 94–95 passim, 105, 118, 136 Wills, John William, 1, 2 women, see under convicts; cooks; indigenous people; middle class; pastoralists Wonnaminta Station, 29 Wood & Sons (pottery makers), 52, 54–58 passim, 97

U

United States, 15, 21, 35, 42, 94, 150; see also North America urban biases, 16, 103 urban contexts, 19, 25, 43, 105, 107, 131–32, 139, 153–56 passim; archaeological sites, 10, 46, 48, 99, 103, 109–18, passim, 121, 139; centres, 15–17 passim, 27, 31, 94, 121, 126–33 passim, 139, 145, 147; environments, 4, 119; households, 6, 119–20; urban settings, 19

219

Who Came to Tea at the Old Kinchega Homestead? respectability, 14, 18, 21, 37, 110–11, 118–21 passim, 131; sites, 43–46 passim, 110, 116, 135, 139; upper, 103, 104, 107, 112, 144; see also Victorian period

Wood, Arthur, 71–72 Wood, G. & Son Co. Ltd (retailers), Adelaide, 97, 101, 102 wool, 26, 94, 127, 143 wool industry, 3, 9, 155; see also pastoral industry woolsheds, 30; Kinchega Station, 2, 125, 126, 129 working class, 10, 14–21 passim; Australian, 16; families, 107, 111, 144; households, 45, 103–104, 110–19 passim, 135;

Y

Yancannia station, 28–29, 140, 147 Young, Linda, 9, 14, 18, 21

220