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2. Earliest dated bellarmine, 1550. Frank Thomas Collection |
Before a chronological and typological series can be adequately established, however, much more work needs to be done on kiln sites in Germany and the Low Countries, and on associated documents; on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Customs House records in England; on the supposed wares of such potters in England as Abraham Rous and Thomas Cullen, David Ramsey, and John Dwight (all of whom have had their claims pressed as native manufacturers of bellarmines, but without firm proof); on accurately stratified finds and on the evidence from datable wrecks, such as the Vergulde Draeck of 1655 and the Amsterdam of 1748. What follow are tentative notes towards such a chronology, based on a comparison of the dated examples with others, and drawing together some of the accompanying evidence both from documents and from pictures.
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2. Earliest dated bellarmine, 1550. Frank Thomas Collection |
The 1550 example is a fairly large one (height 13¾ inches) of a sort traditionally associated with the Cologne kilns(No. 2). The three medallions are decorated with star-rays of acanthus leaves, the surface of the vessel is covered with small prunts like those which decorate German glass of the period, the genial bearded face starts on the tall high-rimmed neck with the full beard flowing out over the globular body. The neck has only one cordon, and the strap handle is steeply arched. Many of these details are almost exactly paralleled in undated examples excavated in England and now in the Ashmolean and Victoria and Albert Museums; and there are less close but still striking undated parallels in the Fitzwilliam, Guildhall and London Museums. In all of these the full three-dimensional modelling of the nose, the carefully sculptured curve of the moustache above the curly and almost rectangular beard, and the individually distinct leaves of the star motif are so similar that the same workshop, if not the same potter, seems responsible. The light-brown speckled (not ‘tiger’) glaze, with slight drips and runs towards the base, has the variations endemic in salt-glaze; but again the similarities are striking.
Only one other dated bellarmine is known before William Simpson’s petition to Queen Elizabeth in 1581. This example, dated 1560 and excavated at the Tower of London, where it is exhibited in the Beauchamp Tower, is much more reminiscent of the pieces associated with Frechen than Cologne. Indeed, though it is given by Holmes as representative of his Type I mask, if one were to ignore the date on might be inclined to assign it to the 1590s, right down to such details as the horizontal leveling-off of the base of the handle. The modelling of the mask, though naturalistic, lacks finesse. What it does do, however, is bear out the earliest known literary reference to bellarmines. This is in Bulwer’s Artificial Changeling (1563), first quoted by Jewitt, in which it is said of a formal doctor that ‘the fashion of his beard was just, for all the world, like those upon Flemish jugs, bearing in gross the form of a broom, narrow above and broad beneath.’ The moulded mask of this Tower of London bellarmine, with the beard starting on the tall narrow neck, swelling out and then abruptly curtailed, fits this description. Note too that as early as this such jugs were spoken of as Flemish, a notion that persists (along with Dutch) throughout the period of their manufacture, though their main source was supposedly the Rhineland, at least until the beginning of the second quarter of the seventeenth-century. The explanation for this must be that most Rhenish stoneware was carried to England, and elsewhere, in Netherlandish ships.
William Simpson’s 1581 petition, first quoted by Chaffers, reads: ‘The sewte of William Simpson, merchante- Whereas one Garnet Tynes, a straunger livinge in Acon, in the parte beyond the seas, being none of her majesties subjecte, doth buy uppe alle the pottes made at Culloin, called Drinking stone pottes, and he onclie transporteth them into this realm of England, and selleth them: It may please your majestic to graunt unto the said Simpson full power and onclie license to provyde transport and bring into this realme the same or such like drinking pottes; and the said Simpson will putt in good suretie that it shall not be prejudiciall to anie of your majesties subjects, but that he will serve them as plentifullic, and sell them at as reasonable price as the other hath sold them from tyme to tyme. Item. He will be bounde to double her majesties custome by the year, whenever it hath been at the most. Item. He will as in him lieth draur the making of such pottes into some decayed towne within your majesties realm, wherebie manic a hundred poor men may be sett a work. Note. That no Englishman doth transport any potte into this realm but onlie the said Garnet Tynes, who also serveth all the Lowe Countries and other places with pottes.’ It can be seen from this that Simpson’s prime wish was to break the apparent import monopoly of Tynes; his desire to establish the actual manufacture of such stoneware in England was no more than hopeful.
