Transcript Slide 1

The Bellarmine Jug
1550-present
The Glossary of Historic Ceramic Terms defines the jug as, a stoneware jug or
bottle decorated with a molded bearded human face molded onto the neck.
Known also as ‘Greybeards’, ‘Barmannskrugen’ or ‘Barbmans’
A round-bellied,
narrow-necked vessel
with a bearded mask,
at first collectively called
Bartmanner (bearded men)
and made at Frechen, near
Cologne,
in the 16th century.
Bellarmine
second half of the 16th century
It was changed in mockery into
the likeness of
Cardinal Bellarmine,
and became popular with
Protestants under the name
bellarmine or grey-beard as a
coarse retort to the cardinal's
unanswerable arguments
against Protestantism in his
Controversies.
It is now obsolete,
but many remain.
New Catholic Dictionary
Earliest dated bellarmine, 1550
Frank Thomas Collection
The notion that bellarmines were ever intended to be representations or caricatures of
Bellarmino has been satisfactorily and extensively demolished (the Cardinal was only
eight years old when this example was made), and clearly the name was a post hoc jest.
The jugs originated in the Germanic areas of Europe in the early 1500's,
but later turned up in many different areas of the continent.
The origins of the jugs is still a mystery and the connection to
St. Robert Bellarmine is also questioned.
It is not until William Cartwright’s play The Ordinary in 1634 that the term bellarmine
is used to describe the jug, by which time Cardinal Bellarmino,
had been dead for a dozen years.
Grey-white glazed Bellarmine,
1585. Fitzwilliam Museum.
Bellarmine with Tudor arms and
inscription of Elizabeth I, 1594.
British Museum.
Beardman jugs are stoneware: water-resistant and durable, made from dense
opaque non-porous clay fired at temperatures of 1200°-1280° C (2191°-2336° F).
The clay turns white, buff, gray, or red and is glazed for aesthetic reasons.
STONEWARE: Clay which can be fired within 2% of total vitrification or less are
considered to be stoneware. Stoneware clays are usually made up of blended clay
bodies to produce a malleable, strong clay which can be worked on the potters’ wheel
and fired to a vitreous state. Color and texture of stoneware clays can vary quite a lot.
Stonewares were imported from Europe to the
American Colonies
until the end of the Revolutionary War.
Germany and England were the largest producers
and exporters of stoneware. American production
began in the mid 18th century and
both imitated and competed with the
European imports despite trade restrictions.
Large scale manufacture did not occur until
immediately after the Revolutionary War.
The large centers in the North spread from
New Jersey and New York into
New England.
The southern centers were concentrated in
Philadelphia and eastern Pennsylvania. Over time,
more potteries started and began spreading further
south.
The tradition of salt glaze and alkaline glaze
stoneware continued there well into the mid 19th
century.
Jug bodies were made on a potter's wheel. After that the handle was fitted.
Relief decorations including the beard face were prepared separately in
molds. The molds were usually short-lived, especially those for the beard face;
sometimes they were used for only a few jugs each, which results in the many
different figures shown.
The lower part of the
beard was damaged,
enabling us to see how
the face was applied to
the the jug.
Bartmann jug with pewter lid
Stoneware salt-glaze German
Rhineland, late sixteenth century
(National Museums and Galleries of
Wales)
Bartmann jug from Cologne 1535-50
Dark grey clay body with salt glaze. Decorated
rectangular bearded face mask, foliage, fruit
and blossoms and lion mask roundels.
Found in London. (Museum of London)
The German bellarmine jug and the English stein are the most common forms of brown
salt glazed stoneware produced for foreign markets.
Salt Firing
The salt glaze characteristic of a
beardman jug was formed by
throwing common salt into the
kiln during firing.
The salt (sodium chloride)
interacts with the
silica and alumina
in the clay to form a thin glaze
which often has a
slightly pitted surface which
potters call 'orange peel'.
Salt being adding in angle iron, other methods include paper
wrapped "salt burritos" or by ladling damp salt into the
firebox with long handled metal scoop.
Salt is usually added to the kiln between 2100F and 2400F.
Today many potters are adding soda ash to achieve effects similar to salt firing.
Spies-A hole left in the front and back of kiln at different levels to
enable the pottter to view atmosphere, cones and draw rings during
firing.
Cones-Most accurate way of determining temperature during a firing.
Placed in different parts of the kiln they will also indicate any variation
of temperature.
Draw Rings-drawing out trial rings of clay from the kiln is a way of
judging how the salting is proceeding. The ‘draw rings’ should be
made from the same clays that have been used to make the wares.
Cones and Draw Rings
Before firing
Cones and Draw Rings
After firing
Watching the cones through the spy hole
Drawing a ring by inserting an iron bar through the ring,
then carefully lifting it out of the kiln through the spy hole.
Color is added to stoneware by dipping in a slip (liquid clay) before firing. Blue and
purple wares were first developed at Raeren from c.1587: the blue color came from
cobalt, and purple from manganese. Siegburg wares are usually off-white.
triple applied crowned oval medallions
of the arms of the City of Amsterdam;
splashes of cobalt on bearded mask
brown mottled tiger surface
height: 8" base diameter: 4¼" 1590
6 5/8” x 2 5/8”, 1690
splashes of cobalt blue
on mask and each of
three applied medallions
German, 1600
Frechen, German
The lower part of jugs is usually colorless (apart from drips),
because the artisan had to hold the jug while dipping it in the slip.
Tiger-ware?
Bartmann bottle,
Stoneware salt glaze, 17th century
Iron wash under coarse-speckled salt glaze,
‘Tiger’ware.
The mottled surface may
originally have been
unintentional, The Frechen
potters soon realized that the
effect was seen as a quality
and should be produced
deliberately, as it was in great
demand by foreign markets.
Many of these ‘getigerten’, or
‘Tiger-ware’, bottles and jugs
were given additional value by
being embellished with silver
mountings when they were
imported into England.
Imports to Britain
The first salt-glaze pots seen
in Britain were those
imported from Germany as
early as the mid-fourteenth
century.
The majority of the brown
stoneware bottles from the
Rhineland were shipped to
London from the Low
Countries, together with the
wine and beer that was
decanted from the casks into
the vessels.
Salt-glaze stoneware ‘bellarmine’,
medallion showing a man holding a
cup and staff. This bottle represents
the earliest salt-glaze stoneware
made in England.
A rare stoneware
salt-glaze bottle
bearing the insignia of
the crown and thistle
and
the initials ‘CR’
(Charles II)
Height 21.1cm. , 1675-1685
In Anthony Wood’s ‘Pocket Almanacs’,
the entry for 30 December 1677
‘One of the followers of Exeter Coll., when Dr.
John Prideaux was rector, as tis said, sent his
servitour after 9:00 at night
to fetch some ale from the alehouse.
When he came home with it under his gowne,
the proctor met him and ask’d him what he
made out so late and
what he had under his gowne.
He answered that his master had sent him to the
stationer’s to borrow Bellarmine and that it was
Bellarmine that he had under his arme;
and so went home.
Whereupon in following times, a bottle with a
great belly was called a "Bellarmine",
as it is to this day.’ Dr. John Prideaux was a
Rector of Exeter College from 1612 until 1643,
so that –
the term bellarmine was in use in the first half of
the seventeenth century
John Dwight 1671–98,
English potter, founder of the Chelsea porcelain factory. The registration in 1671 of
his patent for the "Mystery of transparent earthenware …" is the first certain recorded
event of his life. He is considered to have laid the foundation of the pottery industry in
England and to have set a standard not excelled elsewhere. There are examples of
his work at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum.
This tall ‘bellarmine’, still
containing the remnants of a
charm against witchcraft. The
unusual proportions of this
bellarmine together with the
crude mask and rudimentary
seal suggest that this bottle is
not of continental origin.
Witches’ bottles were commonly
used during the seventeenth
century and were usually buried
under the hearth or threshold as
protection against witchcraft.
(Jonathan Horne)
Height 26cm; 1685
Bellarmine Jugs continue to be excavated today. Jugs have been found in Iceland,
Maine, New Jersey
Bath, Maine,
near the mouth of the
Kennebec River, English colonists,
with George Popham as their leader,
established Fort St. George in 1607,
the same year Jamestown, Virginia,
was founded.
The Popham colonists abandoned the
fort after a year
and the site appears to have been
vacant for two centuries.
This fact becomes the major
archaeological importance of the
Fort St. George site:
it means that we can now look at that
critical, initial year of
English colonization in considerable
detail and begin to understand what
life of the colony was like in
1607-08.
The focus of the Popham project archaeologists during their summer 2000
excavations was to locate a building thought to have been occupied by a man named
Raleigh Gilbert.
Gilbert was second in command of the colony and probably a distant relative of George
Popham. He was also the nephew of, and named after, Sir Walter Raleigh. Artifacts
found at Raleigh Gilbert's house point toward its occupant as being a man of high status
due to the type and quality of certain objects, like the ones shown here-fragments from a 17th century, German-made stoneware "Bellarmine" jug.
This Bartmann jug was excavated in 1610 within the
walls of James Fort. It has three medallions around its
belly consisting of a coat-of-arms depicting a crowned
shield that has been divided into four quarters. The first
and third quarters each exhibit a single lion passant,
which means that he is walking with his right paw raised.
The second and fourth quarters each have two lions
passant. In the first quarter, which is the upper left-hand
corner of the shield, there is a heraldic device known as
a fess with a label on chief. This is the band across the
upper third of the escutcheon that is carrying three
stylized fleurs-de-lis. It is this label that identifies the
medallion as Italian and, more specifically, as
representing a member of the Tuscan Anjou party of
Guelfs who from medieval times were staunch
supporters of the Pope.
Guelf coats-of-arms have never before been recorded
on German stoneware. Further, there is no documented
trade of the ware in Italy, so the Bartmann jug from Pit 1
is extremely rare. It must have been commissioned by
an individual, perhaps an Italian merchant, who had
trade or other contacts with northwest Europe.
http://www.apva.org/ngex/c1bart.html