Before modern travelling requisites were known and in the days when journeys were few, the leather-covered coffer contained the whole travelling outfit of perhaps some noble lord and his household. There were also large coffers covered with leather used as permanent receptacles of clothing, covered with ornamental embossed leather work, some very decorative. There were smaller coffers, too; possibly they were jewel caskets in their day. There are others which may have been presentation cases, for their decoration is especially elaborate. In making these continental craftsmen seem to have excelled. In the Victoria and Albert Museum there is a curious German casket of wood covered with leather, strongly bound with iron, having three immense hasps from which locks once hung, altogether too massive for the little casket. One would think such precautions were of not much avail against theft, for the box itself could be removed readily! There is another charming little casket, with a circular or dome-shaped top, decorated and banded, a veritable prototype of the tin trunks generally in use a quarter of a century ago. There is also a remarkable piece, a wood box covered over with leather embossed by the cuir boulli process. The chief design takes the form of two armed horsemen, surrounded by grotesque ornament on the top, on the sides being hunting scenes, episodes of the chase. This curious example of the work of seventeenth-century artists in leather measures 16½ in. in length by 12½ in. in width. Another typical piece, of a highly decorative allegorical character, is a rectangular coffret with arched lid, the ornament being in colours and gilt. On the front is a knight and a lady, on the lid two paladins mounted on griffins, two savages with clubs and shields, and two images of the sun, these typifying the story of the delivery of a captured lady by a knight.
Leather Bottles and Drinking Vessels.
Several interesting specialistic collections of leather bottles and drinking vessels have been got together, showing the varied forms of the almost imperishable vessels, so suitable as liquor carriers and drinking cups in olden time. In the Guildhall Museum are several different types of bottles, black jacks, and silver-rimmed cups. Until comparatively recent times many old inns were famous for their leather drinking cups, but as the coaching days came to an end such vessels were gradually dispersed. Now that motor-cars have popularized the road once more, and old inns are again frequented, the collector seeks in vain for what were once quite common. In another noted collection there is a drinking cup or bottle moulded like a negro's head, and there are what are called pilgrim bottles, some of which are of ornamental type. The so-called pots have sometimes lids and loosely fitting covers; the black jacks, however, are chiefly open, ill-shaped vessels. Some of the black jacks were very large, one in the Taunton Museum measuring 19 in. in height. It was originally used in the servants' hall at Montacute House, which is one of the finest old buildings in Somerset. This famous jack was in olden time filled with beer every morning and placed on the servants' breakfast table. Those smaller cups with silver mounts and shields, on which are often engraved crests or initials of their former owners, are of the rarer type, but they are not infrequently found among the relics of an old family. There is a fine collection in the Hull Museum, and in other places where they are found in excellent condition, proving the truth of the rhyme published in Westminster Drollery in the seventeenth century in praise of the black jack, which runs as follows:—
"No tankard, flagon, bottle, or jug
Are half so good, or so well can hold tug;
For when they are broken or full of cracks,
Then must they fly to the brave black jacks."
Leather Curios.
Some very fine pieces of leather work have been modelled as curios and ornaments. Some of the most notable are models of old warships and fully rigged galleons made of leather. Leather pictures were made some years ago; a little later leather modelling of baskets of flowers, and the making of picture frames of leather was a popular amusement, some of the ornamental brackets made of leather being specially effective. The surrounds of picture frames made of leather cut to shape, carved and modelled, had a very similar effect to the beautiful carved wood work of an earlier period. Some of the powder flasks of leather which were used a century or two ago are valued curios, as well as the leather cases stamped and embossed so decorative and appropriate to the pistols and knives they were made to contain. Of the finer objects there are small curios like leather snuff boxes and trinket cases.
Of the more utilitarian leather work there is the wearing apparel of former days, the leather clothing of Cromwellian times and the leather boots. In the Victoria and Albert Museum there is a remarkably interesting case of leather shoes showing the evolution in style and appearance. There are some very pointed shoes worn in the fourteenth century, a slightly different shape in the fifteenth, both contrasting with the change in fashion which had come about in the sixteenth century, when the boots were square and some of the shoes very rounded. The Wellington boots of a later period are not yet much valued; there may come a time, however, when they will be regarded as museum curios. Leather gloves date back many centuries, and some of the old specimens with gauntlets and decorative cuffs are interesting antiques, as well as leather wallets, purses, and girdles.
Shoes.
Among sundry Eastern curios quaintly shaped and sometimes beautifully embroidered shoes are met with, such as those which have been brought over to this country from China and Eastern lands. Most of the shoes worn in the East are slipped off easily, and, like Persian and Turkish slippers, are made of red leather beautifully embroidered, silk, satin, and velvet being overlaid and embroidered with silver and sequins. The old practice of compressing the feet of young girls in China is dying out, but some of the curious little shoes which gave such pain to their wearers are seen as museum curios on account of their curious decoration. Indian shoes are met with at times, especially those embroidered with silver thread, and with green and other coloured silks. A curious ceremony is associated with the marriage of a Turkish bride, who wears a pair of clogs carved all over, sometimes with symbolical significance, on her way to her prescribed ceremonial visit to the bath. At one time it was customary for a Jewish bridegroom to present his bride with a shoe at the conclusion of the wedding ceremony, this custom being not far removed from that of throwing an old shoe after a newly married couple for luck.