cistern

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Object Type
Museum number: 1887,0210.125
Description: Wall cistern; tin-glazed earthenware; semi-circular section; three horizontal blue bands at the rim, base and centre; two shaped projections pierced for suspension; lion-head spout (damaged); painted in blue with initials and date, sprigs and flourishes.
Cultures/periods
Production date: 1641
Production place: Made in: Southwark
Materials
Ware
Technique: tin-glazed; pierced
Dimensions: Height: 20.50 centimetres (to top of lug); Width: 19.60 centimetres; Depth: 16.50 centimetres (maximum)
$Inscriptions
Curator's comments: Very rare - one of only three cisterns recorded in Lipski and Archer: the others are in the City Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke on Trent and Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, USA.
Bibliographic references: Church 1884 / English Earthenware: A Handbook to the Wares madie in England during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries as Illustrated by Specimens in the National Collections (p. 38); Hodgkin & Hodgkin 1891 / Examples of Early English Pottery Named, Dated and Inscribed (no. 237); Hobson 1903 / Catalogue of the collection of English Pottery in the Department of British and Medieval Antiquites and Ethnography of the British Museum (E103); Lipski & Archer 1984 / Dated English Delftware (p. 341, no. 1510); Austin 1994 / British Delft at Williamsburg (no. 715); Dawson 2010 / English and Irish Delftware 1570-1840 (pp. 174-5, no. 72)
Location: Not on display
Exhibition history: Exhibited: 2010/11, 1 May-9 Jan, London, British Museum, Room 2, Recent Publications from the British Museum Press
Condition: One of the two suspension flaps is damaged and a piece that would have connected the flaps also appears to be missing; some damage to lion mask outlet - May 2006.
Subjects: mammal; plant
Acquisition name
Acquisition date: 1887
Department: Britain, Europe and Prehistory
Registration number: 1887,0210.125
Conservation: Treatment: 26 Mar 1998; Treatment: 28 Nov 1997; Treatment: 11 Apr 2008; Treatment: 06 Jul 2010

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