Tin-glaze earthenware drug jar/ slave pot.

This is a fragment from a slightly flared pedestal base of a tin-glazed earthenware drug jar. This ware is often referred to by archaeologists as delftware. The white coloration of the glaze was obtained by adding tin-oxide to a lead glaze. Against this white field, delft was most often decorated with hand painted cobalt blues. These wares mimicked more expensive Chinese export porcelain in both the white color of the glaze and the use of hand painted blue decoration. Ceramics such as these were produced in numerous locations in both Britain and Holland beginning in the seventeenth-century, though production continued through the end of the following century. While the tableware and teaware forms of this ceramic diminished in popularity through the eighteenth century, delftware continued to be a popular for more utilitarian forms.

Drug jars, as the name suggest, often held medicines in the form of powders and pills or ingredients for home remedies. Invoices clearly show Washington ordered both pills and Apocathary supplies from his London merchants, as well as, contracted locally with physicians to attend household members, both free and enslaved, during periods of illness. The residents of the Mansion Farm, living in and near the House for Families, may also have possessed of a variety of herbal and traditional medicinal knowledge as well.