LONDON, 1558, MAKER'S MARK A FLEUR-DE-LYS; THE EARTHENWARE POSSIBLY PISA

THE HISTORY OF THE KINGE JUG

By tradition, this pot with its beautifully striated earthenware body is believed to come from John Kinge whose will contained several bequests of silver including 'my stone jug faced and covered with silver' which he stipulated should pass to '...Roger my sonne after the decease of my wife shall have'. The pot subsequently descended through the Kinge family to the Reverend John William Kinge (1793-1875) of Ashby Hall, Ashby de la Launde, Lincolnshire. It was included in the inventory made on the death of the Reverend John William Kinge described as a 'pitcher..mounted in gold 1581'. The Reverend John Kinge was not only the parson of Ashby but also a landowner with a passion for the turf. His stud produced the filly Apology which won the 'Triple Crown' of the Thousand Guineas, the Oaks and the St Leger in 1874. His successes came to the attention of the Bishop of Lincoln who disapproved of his endeavours and he was forced to resign his parish, dying the following year.

MOUNTED STONE AND EARTHENWARE JUGS

Unmounted salt-glazed Rhenish or "Tigerware" stoneware pots or jugs were ubiquitous in the Tudor household. P. Glanville, op. cit., makes a detailed examination of the trade in such wares and the Tudor fascination with mounting these domestic vessels in silver and silver-gilt. She notes that the city of Exeter alone was importing up to five thousand pots a year by the end of the 16th century. Such a pot is illustrated in the still life of circa 1620 opposite attributed to David Rijckaert (II) now in the collection of the National Museum, Warsaw. This Kinge jug is unusual in incorporating lead-glazed pottery rather than stoneware, probably made in Italy, possibly Pisa, for the Northern European market, another similar example is in a private collection, the mounts dated 1572, illustrated here. The maker identified with the fleur-de-lys mark appears to have been active between 1546 and 1562 and produced several fine mounted wares including a mounted stoneware pot of 1546 now in the Ashmolean Museum and the famous Parr Pot, also of 1546 and with a Venetian glass body, now in the Museum of London.

The fashion for adorning stoneware vessels with silver and silver-gilt mounts, as is so often the case, appears to have started at the Royal Court. Glanville records that King Henry VIII's cardinal Wolsey and his administrator Thomas Cromwell both possessed such pots in the 1520s. By 1574 the Jewel House contained examples made for the Marquess of Exeter in 1538 and another which had belonged to Edward, Duke of Somerset from 1552. The cost of mounted pots around the time of the manufacture of the Kinge pot was in the region of £2 to £3. Margaret, Countess of Rutland paid £2.17s.8d for such a piece in 1551.