Chats on Old Silver

by Arthur Hayden

Mounted in silver-gilt, ornamented with quatrefoil belts. Inscription on boss, “A Gift to the Parish of St. Petrock, 1490.”

INTERIOR OF MAZER, SHOWING INSCRIPTION.

(In possession of Parish of St. Petrock, Exeter.)

The mazer, a wooden vessel in form like the more modern punch-bowl, mounted in silver, is the earliest type of our domestic plate. These bowls were ornamented with silver bands and silver rims, and in some cases there was a silver circular plate or boss in the centre of the vessel inside. The example we illustrate is mounted in silver-gilt with quatrefoil belts. It has an inscription on the boss, “A Gift to the Parish of St. Petrock, 1490.” The wood of these mazers was usually maple, and the name is supposed to be derived from the British word masarm (maple). The Dutch word maeser means a knot of maple wood. Spenser in the sixteenth century has the lines:

Then, lo! Perigot, the pledge which I plight,

A mazer ywrought of the maple ware,

Wherein is enchased many a fair fight

Of bears and tigers that make fierce war.

Among the earliest of drinking vessels of the Middle Ages this form of the broad bowl followed the earlier horn drinking cup. Mazers were not made after the sixteenth century. The form was not confined to England, for Sir Walter Scott, in his “Lord of the Isles,” has the couplet: