Fig. 264.
The pottery of this period consisted chiefly of pitchers, dishes, bowls, or basins, and what we should now term porringers or pipkins; the bowls or basins and dishes being used for drinking purposes as well as for placing cooked meats in; the pitchers for holding and carrying ale, mead, water, and other liquors to the table, and the porringers both for eating and for cooking with. The uses of these vessels, as well as their general forms, are gathered from the illuminated MSS. of the time which have come down to us. The annexed engraving (Fig. [264]) from a twelfth-century MS., shows the pitchers, the water or wine vessels—both in their locker and being carried up to the feast by attendants, one of whom is drawing water from a draw-well in the yard. Fig. [263] shows, on a table set out for dinner, the bowls or basins for the food and for drinking from, one of which holds a fish. The plate-like articles, it should be mentioned, are bread which was made in cakes, and variously ornamented with the knife. The other engravings (Figs. [262] and [266]) are excellent representations of pitchers and wine vessels, drinking-cups and bowls, and other characteristic vessels. The next Fig. ([265]) gives the form of the drinking-cups excellently well, and enables one to determine that the small vessel engraved (Fig. [246]) was one used for that purpose. It should be stated, however, that, as in the former case, the objects between the drinking-cups on the table are not plates, but cakes of bread.
Fig. 265.
Fig. 266.
Figs. 267 to 270.—From Burley Hill.
The clay of which Norman pottery is formed is usually of a coarse kind, and the vessels bear evidence in many instances of the wheel having been used. In colour they are sometimes of a reddish brown, at others of a tolerably good red, while at others again they are nearly black; and many of the pitchers, &c., are either wholly or partially covered with a green or other glaze. Many are quite devoid of ornament, but others have the ends of the handles formed into foliage, &c., by the pressure of the finger. Some, however, are rather highly decorated. Figs. [267 to 270] show four small-sized jugs, ranging from four and a half to seven inches in height, two of which are devoid of ornament, and the other two have their handles foliated. Figs. [273 and 275] show pitchers of a larger growth, of the same clumsy coarse kind of clay, and ornamented in the same primitive manner. They are about nine inches in height, and are green glazed.