Malling jug
The jug, probably Antwerp, Holland, around AD
1580
The mounts, London, England, AD
1581-2
Etienne Perlin, a French visitor to London in
the 1550s, noted that the English drink beer 'not in
glasses but in earthenware pots with silver handles and
covers'. Earthenware remains porous after firing, and
earthenware vessels that intended to contain liquid are covered
with a glaze. This tankard is one of a number of surviving mounted
tin-glazed earthenware pots of bulbous form, with a mottled glaze
in brown, blue and purple. It was used in the church at West
Malling, Kent until sold in 1903, and consequently all tankards of
this type with English mounts dating from the sixteenth century are
known as 'Malling
jugs'.
The actual
origin of the 'Malling jugs' has been something of
a puzzle. However, as a result of recent archaeological discoveries
and current scientific analysis, it is now thought that these jugs
were made in the Low Countries (modern-day Holland, Belgium and
northern France), in the Antwerp area, for the London market. Trade
between the Low Countries and the southern and eastern counties of
England was especially vigorous. The strapwork, figures and foliate
ornamental motifs on the mounts are characteristic of English Tudor
silver.
This
'Malling jug' has silver-gilt mounts with a London
hallmark for 1581-2, and a maker's mark of a fleur-de-lis.
The hinge box is engraved with the initials of a husband and wife
'WHE'
, 'Recent acquisitions of post-medieval ceramics and glass in the British Museum's Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities (1982-88)', Burlington Magazine-5 (August 1988)
P. Glanville, Silver in Tudor and Early Stua (London, 1990)