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silver and earthenware pot

Description
The earthenware jug has a bulbous body and cylindrical neck and is covered with a mottled mauve glaze. A plain ring mount is attached to the foot by engraved foliate tongues. There are plain rings around the base of the body and the neck, each with similar engraved foliate-tongue borders, joined by three vertical straps with similar borders and a narrow applied strip down the centre of each strap. The broad neck mount is engraved with an inscription in Latin which translates as:

This fragile cup was bought by me in A.D. 1618 and soon after given to my maternal great-uncle Nicholas Miller, Esquire, who, concluding his last day in the year 1621 at the age of 85, bequeathed it to me together with other things so worthy of note that I would be ungrateful if I did not record them. Nicholas Miller, Knight, on June 12 in the year 1658 at the age of 65.

The raised, flat-topped cover is shaped to a point opposite the handle and engraved with a coat of arms within a foliate mantle. The tankard has a bifurcated and reeded thumbpiece and a plain S-scroll handle.

Construction
The pot has been broken and repaired and is crazed, with cracks clearly visible on the inside. The mounts on the pot are assembled with hinge joints, and the lip mount is formed from a seamed sheet. The cover is raised and has an internal seamed flange. The handle, of D-section, is raised in two parts, which are soldered together; it is clearly a repair and is secured at its lower junction to the stump of the former ceramic handle, which has itself been covered with a silver mount.

Heraldry
The arms are those of Miller of Wrotham, Kent. The younger Nicholas Miller mentioned in the inscription married Anne, daughter of William Style of Langley, Buckinghamshire. He was knighted in 1658.

Commentary
A number of questions are posed by this unusual object and its curious inscription. The mounts are presumably contemporary with the inscription, since the style of the cover and thumbpiece could not be any earlier than the mid-seventeenth century. It is unlikely that the pot would have been regarded as "so worthy of note," however, had it not originally had silver mounts. It is possible, therefore, that a first set of mounts was replaced by the present set around 1650, perhaps after the pot was broken and repaired. The reference in the inscription to "this fragile cup" could thus be taken as an allusion to its already damaged state. Subsequent alterations can also be detected in the handle: the screws below the hinge and the damaged condition of the junction of the handle with the lip mount both indicate a crude repair that postdates the mount. Moreover, the thumb rest at the upper part of the handle suggests that it was probably made in the early eighteenth century, although it could have been carried out even later.

This type of early English tin-glazed ceramic imitating the form of imported Rhenish salt-glazed stoneware is known as Malling ware. The name is taken from a silver- gilt-mounted pot of 1581 used for many years as a communion vessel in the church of West Malling in Kent. There is no evidence, however, that these jugs were locally made; it is more probable that the pottery was located in London.

Glossaries

foliate - to decorate with foliage or leaves
raised - formed from a single sheet of metal by repeated hammering over an anvil
bifurcated - divided into two parts or branches
reeding - thin, parallel, convex mouldings, often used for the ornamentation of a border

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