(4) The name of a fabric made in both linen and cotton, and commonly bleached and finished stiff. The word is a shortened form of “drilling,” from the German drillich, or “three-threaded,” and is so named because the weave originally used in its construction is what is termed the three-leaf twill, nine repeats of which appear in the accompanying figure, while immediately below the design is an intersection of all the nine threads with the first pick. It is essentially a warp-faced fabric; that is, the upper surface is composed mostly of warp threads. In the figure it will be seen that two out of every three threads appear on the surface, and, by introducing a greater number of threads per inch than picks per inch, the weft is made to occupy a still more subordinate position so far as the upper surface of the cloth is concerned. Although the weave shown is still extensively used in this branch, there are others, e.g. the 4-thread and the 5-thread weaves, which are employed for the production of this cloth. Large quantities of drill are shipped to the Eastern markets and to other sub-tropical centres, from which it is sold for clothing. In temperate climates it forms a satisfactory material for ladies’ and children’s summer clothing, and it is used by chefs, hairdressers, provision merchants, grocers, buttermen, painters and decorators, &c., while many of the long jackets or overalls, such as those worn by many mill and factory managers, are made from the same material.
DRINKING VESSELS. [1] The use of special vessels for drinking purposes may fairly be assumed to have had a natural origin and development. From a practical point of view it would soon be found desirable to provide vessels for liquids in addition to those serving to hold food. As in many other commonplace details of modern life, we must turn to the primitive races to understand how our present conditions were reached. In almost all parts of the world many of the products of nature are capable of serving such purposes, with little or no change at the hands of man; in tropical and sub-tropical climates the coco-nut and the gourd or calabash require but little change to adapt them as the most convenient of drinking utensils; the eggs of the larger birds, such as the ostrich or the emu, shells, like the nautilus and other univalves, as well as the deeper bivalves, are equally convenient. Such natural objects are in fact used by the uncivilized tribes of Africa, America and Polynesia, as well as, in some cases, by the white races who have intruded into those parts of the world, and adopted some of the native habits. In Paraguay, for example, the so-called “Paraguay tea,” an infusion of the yerba maté (Ilex paraguayensis), is drunk through a tube from a small gourd held in the hand, and often handsomely mounted in silver or even gold. In the same way, as we shall see, civilized man has adopted nearly all the natural forms that were found convenient by the savage, altering and adorning them in accordance with the taste of the time or country where they were used.
Another line of development, however, has been found to be the natural outcome of the human mind. Nothing could form a more practical drinking cup than the half of a coco-nut shell or part of a gourd. Such cups, however, in the countries where the plants producing them are common, would be easily obtained, and every one, rich or poor, could possess one or more. In order, therefore, to distinguish the chief’s possessions from those of his inferiors, his cup is often made with great labour, from some more intractable material, wood or stone, though in practically the same form as that of the natural object.
Among European races in medieval times the same lines have been followed, though for different reasons. Human ingenuity, though perhaps originally inspired by natural forms, is apt to turn aside into more artificial channels. Early drinking cups. The invention of the potter’s art (see [Ceramics]), where the plastic nature of the raw material renders it capable of infinite changes of form, gave rise to types of vessels having no obvious or necessary relation to the productions of nature. In Britain and in northern Europe generally, the interments of the races of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages have furnished vessels of pottery of a beaker-like form, to which the name of “drinking-cups” has been given. It must be confessed that the evidence for attributing such a use to them is slender, and mainly consists of the fact that their thin lips would render them better adapted for the purpose than the other pottery vessels found with them, some of which, on equally slight grounds, have been called food vessels. The general use and acceptance of the term by two generations of archaeologists is, however, an adequate reason for a passing mention in this place. In the later prehistoric times of Europe vessels of gold, bronze and other materials, including amber, were made, sometimes of elegant forms, and would seem to have been used as drinking vessels; still, this is again an assumption, though a fairly probable one. A small gold cup with handle was found in a barrow at Rillaton, Cornwall; one of amber of a similar form was found at Hove, and a third of shale near Honiton. All of these doubtless may be referred to the Bronze Age.
Schliemann found many drinking vessels in his exploration of the superimposed cities of Troy. A pretty form is that found in the first city. It is of clay, and closely resembles an early Victorian tea cup on a high foot. This form New forms found by Schliemann. is of interest, as Schliemann discovered the same both at Tiryns and Mycenae, five from the latter site being of gold, while the type also occurs from Ialysus in Rhodes in association with bronze swords. This Trojan cup was found at a depth of 50 ft. below the present surface and about 18 ft. below the stratum of what Schliemann claimed to be the Homeric Troy. In his second city appears a different type of ware, somewhat fantastic in form, one vessel being in the form of a sow, while others foreshadow the crater and amphora of later and more familiar Greek wares.
But the drinking vessel to which Schliemann draws most attention is the tall cup of a trumpet form furnished with two earlike loop handles. This curious and original type occurs also in the Third (or Homeric), Fourth and Sixth Cities, with little if any change. Schliemann devotes some pages to the discussion of the form, in which he sees the δέπας ἀμφικύπελλον[2] of Homer, which has been more usually understood to mean an hour-glass shaped cup, in which the distinguishing feature was two cups, not two handles. He applies the same term to a drinking vessel of a very different form, found with several others in the Third City. This is a sauce-boat shaped vessel[3] of gold, made with a lip for pouring or drinking at either end, and with two loop handles. This equals those previously mentioned in originality of form; with it were found others of gold, silver and electrum (i.e. 4 parts of gold to 1 of silver). Of these three were shaped like 18th-century coffee cups but wanting handles. In the Sixth City appear forms more nearly approaching those of later times, particularly prototypes of the cantharus and scyphus.
These discoveries in the various strata of Troy may be taken as the analogues in the Mediterranean and hither Asia of the later Stone and Bronze Ages of northern Europe, with an allowance of some centuries of greater antiquity for the former.
It is not proposed in this article to deal with the ceramic and metallic drinking vessels of the Greeks and Romans, of what is generally known as the classical period (see [Ceramics] and [Plate]). It may be mentioned, however, that both on the Rhine and in various places in Britain, notably at Castor in Northamptonshire and in the New Forest, were factories where large numbers of pocula or drinking cups were made; those made on the Rhine and at Castor bearing legends to indicate their use. Many of these are to be seen in the British Museum and in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne.
After the decline of Roman power, the Gothic and Scandinavian races who replaced the Romans in central and northern Europe brought with them their own forms and types of drinking vessels. These, from about the 4th century, replaced Gothic and Scandinavian types. the well-known Roman vessels. The northern barbarians were as great drinkers as fighters, and their literature recites with equal zest the richness of their drinking cups as the power and deadly qualities of their arms. Fortunately the practice of burying with the dead warrior all his property, or at least as much of it as he would be supposed to need, has preserved to our day the actual vessels in use by the pagan northmen who pervaded northern Europe from the 4th century onward. Saxon graves in Britain have furnished great numbers of drinking cups and horns, in many cases quite unbroken. From the remains, of which the chief series are in the British and Liverpool Museums, we can learn a great deal to amplify the references in literature. The richest single interment that has yet been found was within the present churchyard at Taplow. Here under a huge mound lay buried a Saxon chieftain surrounded by his belongings; arms defensive and offensive, his drinking cups, and even his game of draughts. The drinking vessels consisted of five cows’ horns and four glass cups. The former were of great size, 2 ft. long, richly mounted at the mouth and at the point with silver bands embossed and gilt. The glasses also were of great size and of a type familiar in Saxon interments. Each was of a trumpet shape, with a small foot, while the sides were ornamented with hollow pointed tubes bent downwards, and open on the inner side, so that the liquid would fill them. Such a plan is most unpractical, and it must have been very difficult to keep the vessels clean. Glasses of this uncommon form have not been found elsewhere than in Saxon graves, either in England or in the north of the continent. Other types are perhaps nearly as characteristic, though of simpler construction. One of these is a simple cone of glass, sometimes quite plain, at others ornamented with an applied spiral glass thread, or more rarely with festoons of white glass embedded in the body of the vessel. A third form is a plain cup or bowl widely expanded at the mouth and with a rounded base, so that it could only be set down when empty, in fact a true “tumbler.” This feature is in fact a very common one in the drinking vessels of the Saxon race. There are many other varieties, plain cylindrical goblets, generally with ornamental glass threads on the outside, and a more usual type has a rounded body somewhat of the shape of an orange with a wide plain mouth. Many of all these classes were found in the famous cemetery known as the King’s Field at Faversham in Kent (the relics from which are now in the British Museum), at Chessel Down in the Isle of Wight, and in the cemetery within the ancient camp on High Down, near Worthing. In Belgium, France and Germany the same types occur, and even as far north as Scandinavia, where they are found in association with Roman coins of the 4th century. On the continent, however, additional types are found that do not occur in Britain—one of these is a drinking glass in the form of a hunting horn with glass threads forming an ornamental design on the outside. From the wide distribution of these types, it seems certain that they sprang originally from a common centre, and the slender evidence available on the subject seems to point to that centre having been somewhere on the lower Rhine. Although glass seems to have been popular and by no means rare as a material for drinking vessels, other materials also were used. A large number of the smaller pottery vessels would serve such a purpose, and in one grave at Broomfield in Essex two small wooden cups were found which, from their small size and thinness, were no doubt used for liquid.