The aposiopesis in the last is pregnant with meaning. ¶ Naturally after all these years good examples of old Staffordshire wares are scarce, and when they appear in the market they can only be bought at proportionately good prices, owing to the eagerness with which they are sought by the collector. And me judice they deserve all the attention they get. There is something genuinely fascinating in their naïve simplicity and their entire lack of all that is artificial or extraneous. We do not, of course, pretend that for instance the use of slip originated in this country, but the particular application of it that is so characteristic of the Staffordshire wares is of purely native development. These early pots are like the potters who made them and their friends who used them, English to the backbone.
FIG. XV.—Cup of Slipware, dated 1719.
NEW ACQUISITIONS AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUMS
VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM
A MEDIAEVAL SILVER CHALICE FROM ICELAND
THE national collection of silversmiths’ work at South Kensington has lately been enriched by the acquisition of a silver chalice of exceptional beauty and interest, which has reached this country, by way of Denmark, with the history of having belonged formerly to the church of Grundt, a village in the north of Iceland. ¶ As will be seen from the illustration, the chalice is of the early type in which the round contour prevails, in hemispherical bowl, bulb-shaped knop, and circular foot. The bowl is of fine workmanship, fashioned with the hammer with admirable uniformity, and finished with a high polish on the outside. Round its margin runs the leonine hexameter (with some allowances) + SVMMITVR HINC NVNDA DIVINI SANGVINIS VNDA (no doubt for ‘sumitur hinc munda divini sanguinis unda ’).[34] The lettering of the inscription, of which a rubbing is shown, is interesting, apart from the beauty and freedom of its forms, in helping to fix an approximate date for the object it adorns. ¶ The knop, separated from the bowl by a narrow indented necking with beaded edges, is cast hollow, pierced and chiselled with four compartments of foliage. The leafage in each compartment is of a different design, and in each springs from the turned-up ends of a circumscribing band stamped with a row of annulets (see [illustration]). The upper spandrels so formed are filled each with a small leaf; the lower are blank. ¶ The trumpet-shaped foot is finished round the margin with a bevel, engraved with a rudimentary fret and turned out at the edge in a narrow rim. At its junction with the knop it is enriched with a border of vertical leaves rising from a kind of nebuly band. The workmanship of the foot is notably inferior to that of the bowl; the hammermarks are plainly visible inside, and outside no careful polishing has smoothed away the concentric markings of the turning tool which was used, after the hammer, on both bowl and foot. It may perhaps be suggested that the inferior finish of the foot is evidence of its not having originally belonged to the bowl; but the suggestion is discredited by the excellent proportion existing between the two, and by the similarity of both to the corresponding parts of other examples about to be noticed. It is more probable that a higher finish was imparted to the bowl in deference to its function as the receptacle of the consecrated wine. ¶ To conclude the description, the enriched portions, that is to say, the band of inscription round the bowl, the knop with the parts adjacent, and the bevel of the foot, and these only, are gilt, by the old mercury process, with a pale gold. The measurements are: height 413⁄16 in. (12˙2 cm.), diameter of bowl 3¾ in. (9˙5 cm.), diameter of foot 39⁄16 in. (9 cm.). With the chalice is a paten of plain silver, a slightly concave disc 51⁄16 in. (12˙9 cm.) in diameter, with a roughly-formed circular depression. As this is of very rough make, and has no appearance of being that which originally accompanied the chalice, it need not be referred to further.
A SCANDINAVIAN CHALICE OF THE EARLY THIRTEENTH CENTURY, WITH DETAILS (ACTUAL SIZE) OF INSCRIPTION AND DECORATION; IN THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, SOUTH KENSINGTON.