Full Description
Among the highlights presented here are three magificent examples of the English jug, described in 1948 by the great historian of ceramics W.B. Honey in his Forward to Bernard Rackham's pioneering book Medieval English Pottery, "quite simply, as the most beautiful pottery ever made in England. Formerly despised for their roughness and lack of superficial refinement, they are now recognised as worthy of comparison for their nobility of form with the early Chinese wares, so much admired today as the finest of all pottery." Remaining intact in very small numbers - surviving only when retrieved as wasters from the excavated ruins of kilns or if they fell down wells into water - medieval pots are indeed great works of art. The potter of the Middle Ages had only quite basic technology at his disposal but he used it with extraordinary skill and economy of means. Perhaps more than any other works of art, they display the evidence of their manufacture: the splaying out of the ends of handles with the thumbs to give a hold, the bases pressed down like aprons around the base; and wheel marks and ridges dug out with the fingertips.The bodies have beautiful colours from different local clays - red, brown, yellow, ash-grey to almost black, baked to a wide variety of shades in the primitie kilns. The textures can be fine and smooth or gritty and sparkling with sand or pounded shell mixed in. The heavy glazes are dipped or splashed on in a restricted range of greens and browns but can be incredibly supple and rich. Since the early 20th century, these wares have been prized not only by collectors of medieval art but also by Modernist artists and designers.This is particularly true in England where, for some reason, so many of the finest pots seem to have originated. This interest was intense at the time but it has become less so in recent decades. And though there has been much important research on archaeological investigation published, there has been litle presentation or study on medieval pots as works of art. Informed by all the latest archaeological research, detailed examination of each work by specialist scholar Maureen Mellor is accompanied by exquisite new photography, revealing each remarkable pot and tile in all its glory.Highlights include the Dartford Knight Jug, amongst the most celebrated examples of all medieval English pottery, dating to the late 13th century and made in Scarborough in Yorkshire; the Rye"Royal Presentation" Jug, excavated from a kiln site in Rye in the 1930s, having laid there since its creation in the 14th century - a remarkable survival decorated in a curious scene of finely scratched sgraffito figures; a massive shouldered jug from Kedleston Hall, described when it was discovered in 1862 as "probably the most important and interesting early mediaeval relic of Norman pottery which has ever been exhumed."
