Tankard, glass with enamelled decoration with man and wife and a badge with glazier's tools. Pewter lid. Germany, probably Franconia, 1655

Glass tankard with metal mount and lid, painted in enamels with a gentleman (holding a glass) pledging a lady (holding flowers), an inscription, date '1655' and a badge with tools of the glazier's trade, with initials 'HG'.

Bought from the Bernal Collection.

Provenance

Ralph Bernal (1783-1854) was a renowned collector and objects from his collection are now in museums across the world, including the V&A. He was born into a Sephardic Jewish family of Spanish descent, but was baptised into the Christian religion at the age of 22. Bernal studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, and subsequently became a prominent Whig politician. He built a reputation for himself as a man of taste and culture through the collection he amassed and later in life he became the president of the British Archaeological Society. Yet the main source of income which enabled him to do this was the profits from enslaved labour.

In 1811, Bernal inherited three sugar plantations in Jamaica, where over 500 people were eventually enslaved. Almost immediately, he began collecting works of art and antiquities. After the emancipation of those enslaved in the British Caribbean in the 1830s, made possible in part by acts of their own resistance, Bernal was awarded compensation of more than £11,450 (equivalent to over £1.5 million today). This was for the loss of 564 people enslaved on Bernal's estates who were classed by the British government as his 'property'. They included people like Antora, and her son Edward, who in August 1834 was around five years old (The National Archives, T 71/49). Receiving the money appears to have led to an escalation of Bernal's collecting.

When Bernal died in 1855, he was celebrated for 'the perfection of his taste, as well as the extent of his knowledge' (Christie and Manson, 1855). His collection was dispersed in a major auction during which the Museum of Ornamental Art at Marlborough House, which later became the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A), was the biggest single buyer.

Probably made in Franconia

The enamelled decoration on this tankards shows a man and woman either side of a badge with the tools of the trade of a glazier. The man is holding a goblet and the woman a bunch of flowers. We also find the name of the man, Hanns Gasman and the year '1655'. This decorative scheme (including badges of different types of trade) is quite common on German enamelled drinking glasses and it has been proposed that they were probably gifts at the wedding or an anniversary. The glass was then used by the family of Hanns Gasman, probably for communal drinking with visitors to his house, as was customary in Germany.

1882-1855