British Ceramics on the Northern European Periphery: Creamware Marketing in Nineteenth-Century Northern Finland

Abstract

In 1822, a devastating town fire sealed a large ceramic assemblage from a store in the town of Oulu in northern Finland. Excavations of the merchant’s stock recovered over a hundred kilograms of ceramics that was almost entirely composed of undecorated creamware, a ware and decorative type whose popularity had faded significantly by the 1820’s. The assemblage reveals the global complexities in the international ceramics trade in the early nineteenth century, provides insight into some of the mass-produced commodities reaching geographically peripheral markets, underscores distinctive European market influences, and illuminates marketing and social practices that shaped consumption in markets like Oulu.