Professional Qualifications of Robert Hunter
Robert Hunter has over forty years of experience as a professional archaeologist in the research and excavation of colonial-period sites in Virginia and North Carolina. He has a B.S. (1978) in Sociology and Anthropology from Virginia Commonwealth University; a M.A. (1987) in Anthropology from the College of William and Mary; and has pursued further study in the American Studies Ph.D. Program at the College of William and Mary. He is a former board member of the American Ceramic Circle and is an elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
In 1988, Mr. Hunter became the founding director of the Center for Archaeological Research at the College of William and Mary. From 1990 to 1993, he was assistant curator of ceramics and glass at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. In that capacity, he was responsible for assigning insurance values to a variety of ceramic objects, some exceeding $500,000. Since 1993, Mr. Hunter has worked as an antiques dealer and private consultant, acquiring seventeenth- and eighteenth-century objects for major museums including the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Chipstone Foundation, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts. He was also a partner in the business Period Designs from 1994 to 2012, specializing in English pottery and porcelain and American stoneware and earthenware. Mr. Hunter has appraised several important collections for the National Park Service including archaeological holdings at Jamestown and Yorktown.
Since 2001, he has been editor of the annual journal, Ceramics in America, published by the Chipstone Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He participates in the New York Ceramics Fair each year. He is a standing member of the Vetting Committee for the prestigious Winter Antiques Show held in New York each January. Mr. Hunter has lectured widely on ceramics and has published groundbreaking articles and essays. He has contributed chapters for several books including British Delft at Williamsburg (1994), Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence: Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana (2006), ‘This Blessed Plot, This Earth’: English Pottery Studies in Honour of Jonathan Horne (2011), A Glorious Empire: Archaeology and the Tudor- Stuart Atlantic World (2013) and The Material World of Eyre Hall: Four Centuries of Chesapeake History (2021).
Mr. Hunter has also written for a variety of other publications including The Magazine Antiques, The Catalogue of Antiques & Fine Art, New England Antiques Journal, Early American Life, Ceramic Review, Studio Potter, Ceramics: Art and Perception, Pottery Making Illustrated, Kerameiki Techni, and the Journal of Archaeological Science. He has curated or co-curated several groundbreaking exhibitions including: “Stoneware Pottery of Eastern Virginia, 1720– 1865.” Virginia Historical Society, “Art in Clay: Masterworks of North Carolina Earthenware” Milwaukee Art Museum, and “The Last Drop: Intoxicating Pottery, Past and Present” at the North Carolina Pottery Center. He serves as the Guest Curator for the William C. and Susan
S. Mariner Southern Ceramics Gallery at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts.
Digging Into Ceramics 