Speaking in Spanish, Eating in English; Ideology and Meaning in Nineteenth-Century British Transfer Prints in Barcelona, Anzoátegui State, Venezuela

Abstract

Nineteenth-century transfer-printed ceramics have often been seen as a vehicle for the transmission of various kinds of ideological imagery. Understandably, this past work has largely focused on the United Kingdom and the United States, the country of manufacture of most transfer prints and the largest market for British pottery exports, respectively. As the global British ceramics industry expanded over the course of the 19th century, however, British merchants were expanding into other markets. The second largest of these for pottery exports, after the United States, was South America. The ideological meanings that archaeologists ascribe to transfer-printed ceramics in the North Atlantic World often take on a very different ideological context once the ceramics are exported to South America. A ceramics assemblage from the coastal Venezuelan city of Barcelona provides an opportunity to study these shifting ideological meanings within one South American context.