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Museum

Tankard

Description

Mid sixteenth-century ceramic tankard; stoneware body with copper/copper alloy lid and base; body fabric grey with traces of light brown glaze, with firing fault on belly and several hairline cracks; pottery is imported stoneware from the Rhineland, about 1560; pot body is bulbous in shape with distinctive wheel-turning marks on the lower half of the body and has applied strap handle; the top has a step-domed lid and a cube, box-hinge; the top of the neck of the vessel is sheathed in copper (originally silver-plated/tinned?) and is decorated with roughly executed, incised geometric lines, leaves and a capital 'M' on the front; the lid has a copper-alloy thumb-catch in a scroll-shape design and is stamped with fruit pendants; it is mainly made of copper with alloy bonding; the circular knob on the top of the lid is copper and is decorated with grooved lines that radiate from the centre; the foot and base is of copper (oroginally silvered/tinned?) and a copper alloy, and is stepped in shape; decorated with fruit pendants and has a denticulate border where the metal meets the bottom of the pot; metalwork crudely executed and may possibly be late nineteenth century addition, faking sixteenth century silver-gilt.

  • Measurements

  • Height

    180 mm

  • Diameter

    96 mm (base)
    70 mm (top)

  • Credit line

    CC-BY-NC-ND Image Courtesy of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust