Small white stoneware drinking jug with funnel neck and flaring mouth, largely unglazed, and with ring handle and crimped foot. Three applied medallions relief-moulded with Biblical scenes. Siegburg, about 1550-75.

Small white stoneware funnel-necked drinking jug with flared mouth, bulbous body decorated with three applied medallions, small ring handle and slightly raised foot with pinched decoration. The central of the three medallions is the smallest and is on the opposite side of the jug from the handle. It depicts Jezebel and her two witnesses in the Bible story of Naboth's vineyard and is titled in capital letters above "IESABEL". The medallion to the left depicts Christ healing the woman with the issue of blood and is titled above in capital letters "MATTHEI IX". The medallion on the right tells the parable of the rich man ("Dives") and Lazarus and is titled above in capital letters "LUCE XVI".
Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, King of Tyre, was the queen of Ahab, King of Israel (in Samaria). In the story from I Kings 21, depicted on the central medallion, Ahab coveted the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite. Naboth refused to part with it (under the law of Moses, he was forbidden to sell his paternal inheritance). Jezebel therefore schemed on Ahab's behalf, writing to the nobles and elders to put Naboth on trial before the people. She procured two men, sons of Belial, to witness against Naboth that he had blasphemed against God and the King. He was stoned to death and Ahab was on the point of claiming the vineyard when Elijah came and prophesied against him. Although Ahab repented, his wife and son both died as described in II Kings 9. The tyrannical Jezebel was defenestrated and eaten by dogs.
In Matthew 9:20-22, a ruler (named in Mark V as Jairus, ruler of the synagogue) comes to Jesus in Capernaum to ask Jesus to raise to life his daughter who has just died. As Jesus, surrounded by a throng of people, accompanies Jairus to his home, a woman who has suffered for twelve years with an issue of blood touches the hem of Jesus' garment. (In the accounts in Mark V:25-34 and Luke VIII:43-48, it is explained that she had spent all she had on physicians, suffering much and even getting worse. Jesus sensed power going out of him and the woman was scared when he asked who had touched him). Jesus told the woman that her faith had healed her.
Jesus tells a parable in Luke 16:19-31 about a rich man (sometimes called "Dives" i.e. the Latin for rich man) who dressed in fine clothes and ate sumptuously every day. A beggar called Lazarus lay at his gate, full of sores which the dogs licked and longing to be fed from the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table. The beggar dies and is taken by angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man dies and from the flames of hell asks Abraham to send Lazarus to cool his tongue with water. Abraham says Lazarus is now comforted and the rich man tormented and there is a gulf between them which cannot be bridged. So the rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers. Abraham says that if his brothers have paid no attention to the words of Moses and the Prophets then they will not be persuaded even if someone should rise from the dead.

Transferred from the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street

This jug was made in Siegburg, an abbey town on the River Sieg which joins the Rhine at Bonn. It almost certainly came to London by being imported by Hanseatic merchants.
According to a label underneath its foot, the jug was found in Cannon Street, London, in December 1851. In all probability it was excavated on the site of what became (by 1866) Cannon Street railway station. For many years, from 15th century, the London "Steelyard", or trading settlement of the Hanseatic merchants, was on this site. They controlled much of the cross-Channel trade of stoneware from the Rhine. The name "Steelyard" derives from old German "stalen", describing the attaching of a small metal stamp to cloth to indicate its source.
The jug was added to the collection of the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street. This Museum was founded with the intention of showing examples of British minerals discovered by the Geological Survey and their application in the making of pottery and porcelain. Although the collections were largely British, there was a small display of foreign ceramics, of which this jug was part. The foreign collection had been formed mainly by haphazard donation and there was no intention to seek to fill gaps to make it representative of all countries or classes of ware.

Historical significance: There has been a pottery industry in Siegburg from at least 1150, with exports including stoneware from the mid-13th century and a potters' guild from about 1400. Most of the workshops were just outside the town walls and by the time this jug was made, there existed about fifteen major workshops consisting of masters from several main potting families, their workmen and the apprentices who served a seven year apprenticeship. It is not known which workshop produced this particular jug. Except for the 1580s when wars caused some potters to move away, the Siegburg industry was at its peak between 1550 and 1632 when the town was destroyed by Swedes in the Thirty Years' War.
The local cream-coloured clay, dug from shallow pits, was fine and pure and required little added sand to temper it ready for firing to a high temperature to make stoneware. Fuel was freely available from local forests although in 16th century, stocks of timber gradually became less plentiful. The jug was thrown on a fast wheel and the clay at the base thumbed to form a frilled footring. The handle and relief-moulded medallions were applied to the jug when leather-hard i.e. partially dried. Siegburg potters were the first in the Rhineland to use relief-moulded designs on stoneware. The earliest designs were fairly simple and derived from seals, coins, badges and the like. Increasingly they were cut in stone by outside specialist mould-cutters ("Formenschneider"). The stone moulds were used to make negative, positive, then the final negative ceramic matrices into which clay strips were pressed to form the decorative shapes or medallions. Pots could thereby be decorated in bulk with no extra outlay, then sold to a more exclusive clientele at higher prices than for undecorated pots.
Relief-moulded designs became more intricate and complex in 16th century, using Biblical, mythological, allegorical, heraldic and other imagery from woodblock and metal plate engraved print sources. Particularly popular sources for Biblical figures and stories in the second half of the 16th century were works by Sebald Beham (1500-50), Virgil Solis (1514-62) and Jost Amman (1539-91). Images derived from Reformation propaganda broadsheets were also reproduced as pot decoration. Despite the Rhineland being mainly Roman Catholic, by 1560s the Archbishops of Cologne as well as many Siegburg clergy were Lutheran sympathisers, Cologne had a sizeable Protestant population including refugees from the Netherlands and further afield the Protestant market was growing. Designs include a Pope/Devil double-head and Cardinal/Fool double-head, satires on the Interim of Augsburg (1548) and Christ as the Good Shepherd protecting his sheep from robbers.
The three medallions on this jug may have been chosen randomly by the potter from available relief-moulds but the placing of the small central Jezebel medallion (a faithless, wicked, scheming tyrant who gets her just desserts) between the larger medallions (one with the story of the woman healed because of her faith in Christ's power and the other bearing the parable of the rich man consigned to the flames of hell because he did not heed the warnings of the Law and the Prophets) suggest at least a deliberate Christian message of the respective results of Faith and Faithlessness and may even at a stretch imply a Reformatory agenda (Roman Catholic Church faithless and Protestant Reformers faithful).

Stoneware was ideal for drinking vessels as it is non-porous even when left unglazed and a stronger material than earthenware or glass. The "Trichterhalskrug" or funnel-necked drinking jug was, like many German stoneware forms, produced in some quantity by the ceramic industry of the Lower Rhineland both for local use and export. Stoneware was one of Germany's principal exports which were sent to many countries including Britain. Hundreds of items each year travelled from the centres of production along the Rhine to Dutch ports from where they were loaded on ships to cross the Channel. Funnel-necked jugs were used for wine, as is deduced from the context in which they are placed in contemporary paintings of dining scenes. Drinking jugs decorated with relief ornament (introduced in Siegburg in the early 15th century) fetched nearly twice as much as undecorated (wholesale prices, 1552). While still quite humble vessels, the relief-decorated versions appealed to higher social groups, such as rich merchants and artisans, than the basic undecorated jug previously reached.

This white stoneware funnel-necked drinking jug for wine was made in Siegburg, Germany, about 1550-75. It is decorated with three relief-moulded medallions, each depicting a different story from the Bible. These medallions were applied to the vessel while it was still 'leather-hard' before firing. As decorated drinking jugs cost almost twice as much as plain ones, they would have been bought by a members of a rather higher social class, such as rich merchants or artisans. The vessel was excavated in Cannon Street, London, on the site of the old trading settlement of the Hanseatic merchants who controlled much of the cross-Channel stoneware trade.

2019-1901