Connecting Ceramics to Items Preserved by the Sylvester Manor Team

In NEAAAL, at UMass Boston, we have been looking at 19^th century ceramics from the North Lawn of Sylvester Manor. Sylvester Manor, located in New York, was a plantation up until the 19^th century and remained a home for the Sylvester family until 2005 upon the death of Alice Fiske. The North Lawn contained a Dairy, Washhouse, and associated Midden. As we have been going through the collection, we have pulled out a number of refined earthenware and porcelain that contain matching decorations!

Mending is like a puzzle, for ceramics it’s matching different sherds to recreate a past object like a plate or bowl. When mending, archaeologists might use a special mending glue called B72 to put sherds back together. The decoration on a ceramic is a clue for where each sherd might belong.

We are currently working on three mending projects:

First, a Whiteware plate which was recovered in 2025 and contains 37 sherds.

Grad Students Alex and Ellie work on mending a Whiteware plate

We are also looking at several fragments with the ‘blue willow’ design which mimicked the chinoiserie design from European manufacturers in the 19^th century.

Blue willow design on hollow-ware.

The most expansive project is the reconstruction of several possible plates with the India Temple Pattern.  India Temple is an English chinoiserie pattern that dates between 1814 and 1830. Currently there are four dishes with this pattern preserved by the history and heritage team at Sylvester Manor.

India Temple design on several mended sherds.

India Temple in Sylvester Manor's catalog.

Members of the history and heritage team have been working with a decorative arts collection of materials left by the Sylvester family. This collection includes India Temple pattern ceramics from the early to mid 19^th century. Our India Temple artifacts could be from the same set!

This shows the longstanding connection between History, Heritage, and the archaeology at Sylvester Manor.