Not a clue but I've found some old pieces of pottery & part of a concrete foundation that is very porous, Is the pottery light weight or heavy for it's size, mine is very heavy & I think very old stuff was. Mine is just the reddish clay color, not pretty decorated like yours. Hope you get some answers!

Hefty like a flower pot (or mixing bowl)? Or more delicate like you'd eat off of? Is the inside also glazed? This could keep you and your daughter busy for years. :)

Thanks, all! It's a somewhat more delicate texture, thinner than most flowerpots but not as thin as a teacup. The inside is glazed and the material is quite white and smooth even on the broken edge (porcelain?). The shape implies that it's a bowl or vessel, thicker at the rim and thinner in the main bowl. The edge has a twisted pattern and the body has a basketweave texture.

I feel like it could be old, or it could be from 1985. No clue!

Here are photos with a bit more detail!

At first, I thought it was a piece from a plate, but after seeing an edgewise view (held in your fingers), it may have been from a serving dish.

...or a pie plate. Game pies - sometimes with some unusual main ingredients - were a popular dish throughout much of the 19th century.

So how tight is the curve? Gravy pitcher tight? Mug tight? Or pie plate tight? calculate a diameter for us!

*picks up compass*

Haha, couldn't find my compass, but you all did inspire me to examine it more closely and I figured some things out! I compared the curve to some things in my house to determine the approximate size of the object, and it's way smaller than I'd imagined. I also discovered that the interior "rim" is actually probably a broken off bottom to the vessel. The thinner section has a slightly shiner glaze and the thicker section is rougher, which means I've probably been holding it upside down, and the blue braided detail is the base, not the top. So! I made some rough diagrams and I'm thinking it was something like a sugar bowl. (Pardon the amateur editing).

Look! It sits up by itself on the base.

These are my observations that led to my conclusion.

You can see the very shiny interior here; the interior of the base is less shiny and the bottom edge is even rougher.

The curve approximately matches the diameter of this coaster (from a biergarten in Germany if you're wondering), which is about 4.5 inches across. I compared it to a dessert plate and it's definitely smaller than that.

Here's the exterior view.

And here's what I imagine the whole thing looked like. I'm just guessing about the curve of the walls, since there isn't enough of the curve to judge.

What do you think? Any new ideas about what it might be or how old it could be? Thanks!

Because that inside curve is clean and white unlike the obviously broken edges which have retained some staining from the dirt, I think you should turn your drawing the other way up. The slight inner rim would be where the lid seats.

Maybe--I see what you're saying. But the part that is facing up right now is significantly smoother, whereas the part that is underneath the rim marked "floor of container" is rougher and has retained more dirt. See photo 2, where there are two lines pointing to the "rougher finish." Also, the fact that the "wall" of the upper part is significantly thinner than that of the lower part made me think the lower part is the pedestal (needs to be strong to rest on) and the upper part is the body of whatever vessel it is. I'm open to debate though if you think I'm wrong!

All I can say it that this makes it more likely to belong to a set which maybe increases your chance of finding a match. Maybe.

Or maybe you should just dig up your yard and try to find more pieces. Even though they wouldn't tell you anything! :)

Pottery people, does the inside being white suggest that it's porcelain or china or...?

It could be an artifact from a midden - a polite name for an old trash dump. Before the advent of public refuse removal, broken stuff was usually dumped just out of sight - and smell - from the household.

My grandfather gave me a collection of projectile points - all broken - sixty years ago. He said that he dug them up in the foundation of a house he was building. Though he was a developer, he only "built" one house (1921) from the ground up and that still stands.

Since these were all found in one place, it was obviously a midden for the folks that lived here prior to the arrival of the Jamestown colonists, and the site location would have been perfect for a village. Here on the edge of the continent, the nearest rocks are a hundred miles west. Proper rock suitable for points is even further away, and thus there was no local knowledge for flint knapping. If it was broken, it was thrown away, since there was no way to 'fix' it.

chamber pot

Fori, I'll break out the backhoe! Really, though, it will make me pay much more attention when I'm digging in the garden. Pretty sure I've tossed aside shards before thinking they were nothing. I have definitely found concrete chunks that were much less interesting.

apg4, that's a cool story! I agree it's likely that it's from a trash pile of some sort. I've looked at old maps of my neighborhood (it's been settled since the 1600s) and before our house was built, there was large Victorian-era house with a carriage house, and our yard is located just behind where the carriage house was. Would be a convenient place to toss broken junk. I imagine that when they re-graded the land in the 1930s (it's on a hill, so they terraced it with two long retaining walls the length of our street in order to have flat land for the houses and road), whatever old stuff was lying around just got pushed into our yard. That is, assuming this shard is from the nineteenth/early 20th century.

sam_md, I considered chamber pot as a possibility! I don't think the diameter suggested by the curve, or the thin wall of the smooth-glazed section, makes that a likely guess, though. Hence my guess of sugar bowl.

If you have any intact china sugar bowls handy, have a look at them- mine all have the edge where the lid seats unglazed and slightly rougher than the interior.

Umass has an archeology program. Maybe they could help? http://www.umass.edu/archservices/index.html

Can anyone help identify these? Have found lots of different types of pottery while digging in my parents garden, I am interested to see if they date far back?

Jules - Fragments of sewer pipe

Agree w/ Pea that it is a pitcher. Before the advent of central plumbing, each bed chamber would have a water pitcher that would sit in a matching bowl on a wash stand or chest of drawers - as well as a chamber pot, 'cause it was a long, dark walk to the 'facilities' out back....

Agree, Pea....but disagree on a chamber pot...the curve makes it too small.
But, Pea, can you think of any English or American ware that would be so white and "fine" and still be thick and informally decorated?
The "design" is obviously hand worked, both the rope edge and the texture.....and something makes me think Asian....maybe.....

The actual wall isn't thick just foot. And i think it is mold made... the detail is too soft to be hand textured. I would say maybe spanish for the cobalt handling but i don't recall that spain produced porcelain they did a lot of tin glazed blue and white but it was on a darker earthenware. The cobalt handling just doesn't feel asain to me. I can't think of any asain examples of rope decorated feet, the asain style is more minimalist at the foot.

yeah....neither can i....

That piece looks an awful lot like a cream pitcher my mother had there was a sugar bowl, a cream pitcher and a teapot. The sugar bowl and the teapot both had little legs but the cream pitcher sat flat. It was my grandmother's. I am 65, so you can figure the era from there. If course I may be wrong but it was an instantaneous recognition. Good luck. The cream pitcher was glazed very shiny inside.

Found this on a beach in Pointe a la Croix Quebec - near the site of the Battle of the Restigouche.

can anyone identify this item? It has markings on both sides but not the same direction.