Файл:BLW Bartmann Jug.jpg

1525-50

Germany, Cologne
Salt-glazed stoneware with moulded detail, and pewter lid

This unusual salt-glazed stoneware jug is an elaborate version of the mass-produced Bartmann bottle, so-called because of its applied bearded facemask. Here, though, the whole vessel is moulded in great detail to convey a three-quarter length figure of a man dressed in costume fashionable in the mid-sixteenth century. The pewter lid, openable by flicking the thumbpiece attached to the handle, doubles as the man's hat. Such a jug would have been used to hold beer or wine at the table upon which might also be found other vessels such as those the man is depicted as holding - a rather more conventional Cologne stoneware jug and a facetted green glass drinking flute.

The jug was formerly in the Weckherlin Collection, objects from which formed the core of the South Kensington (now V&A) Museum's German stoneware collection on their acquisition in 1868. The Weckherlin Collection was acquired by a fellow Belgian, the art dealer, publisher and patron of the Pre-Raphaelite painters, Jean Joseph Ernest Theodore Gambart who came to London in 1840 and took British citizenship in 1846. He displayed the collection in his London house "Rosenstead", Avenue Road, near Regent's Park, until a gas explosion caused him to reconsider the long-term security of his remaining pots - he sold 62 objects to the Museum for �800. This jug was then worth �8-10s.