Late 17th Century Salt-Glazed Stoneware Bellarmine Jug, Sea-Recovered from the Barrow Deeps

A characterful late seventeenth century Bellarmine jug — or Bartmannskrug — of the classic Rhenish type, carrying both the bold modelling for which the form is celebrated and the rare and romantic distinction of a documented recovery from the bed of the North Sea.

The waisted, globular body is finished in the mottled, lustrous brown salt-glaze that gives these wares their enduring appeal, the surface broken at the neck by the moulded bearded mask — the Bartmann, or "bearded man" — from which the form takes its name. Long and popularly associated with the militant Counter-Reformation Cardinal, Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621), the grimacing mask lends the jug its English sobriquet. Below, applied to the swelling belly, is an armorial-style medallion charged with a heart and flowering stems — a domestic and decorative variant of the heraldic and city-arms medallions more usually encountered on these vessels.

Bellarmines were produced in vast numbers in the stoneware potteries of the Rhineland — principally Frechen, near Cologne — and exported across northern Europe and to England in great quantity throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, where they served as tavern and household vessels for wine, ale and spirits. Their salt-glazed stoneware bodies, near impervious and remarkably durable, account for their frequent survival; the same robustness saw them pressed into service as witch-bottles, buried beneath thresholds and hearths as charms against malevolence.

The present jug is distinguished by its history. It is accompanied by a covering note recording that it was recovered in 1974, some eight miles out from the Clacton and Frinton waters, drawn up by a fishing boat working the Barrow Deeps — the deepwater channel running through the Thames Estuary sandbanks off the Essex coast. The vessel bears the honest and unmistakable evidence of its long immersion: pitting and abrasion to the surface from the action of the seabed, rubbing, and chipping to the lip and footrim. These are not faults to be apologised for but the very signature of its remarkable survival — three centuries on the sea floor, and a tangible link to the lost cargo or vessel from which it came.

A jug of real presence and considerable narrative interest, equally at home among early ceramics, maritime antiquities, or a collection of vernacular and apotropaic objects.

Provenance: Detailed above.

Material: Salt-glazed stoneware.

Condition: Displaying clear evidence of its long submersion — surface pitting and abrasion consistent with the sea bed, a chip to the lip, and chipping to the footrim. Sound and stable, and wholly commensurate with its history.

Dimensions: Height 8¼ in (21 cm)