A very tasty collection
Whether you want to sip or slurp, there’s a vessel to suit and myriad names. Here’s a guide to which one is for what
COLLECTING antiques can be as simple or as complicated as you like. Go the easy route and you’ll be surrounded by objects that fascinate, ignite a passion that could last a lifetime, might appreciate in value, and will remain as a collection to be remembered by.
Or you could get really serious and embark on a journey of detective work, research, and discovery. The choice is simple, the result the same.
Take silver, for example. Given the security provided by our Hallmarking Act, the earliest of any quality control, it’s easy to fill your home with both decorative and serviceable pieces. If it’s shiny and has assay marks, you like it and can afford it, buy it with confidence.
Scholarly silver collectors, on the other hand, take a more serious approach. Collectors buy obscure pieces by little-known makers in order to research and discover. On occasion, they even disagree on the simplest of detail, even what to call things.
Names used to describe some antique pieces today are not necessarily what they were called when they were new, while some names are either obscure or unknown.
For example, simple objects like bowls and cups served purposes that were indistinguishable from each other in the 17th century, while what we call a tankard today was known as a “pot” to the people who drank from them. And a tankard without a lid is called a mug.
Another name that divides opinion is the so-called “strawberry dish”. Was the shallow, fluted dish with a shell-shaped handle ever intended to hold strawberries?
Given the size of a handful of average strawberries and given that the dishes are often much smaller than your average saucer, it seems unlikely, but there you are.
Or was it a wine taster in disguise (more of which later, because I’ve heard of a collector with the definitive answer)?
The term “porringer” is particularly vexatious. It seems like any cup or bowl with twin handles is given the name and then there’s the “posset” pot, bowl or cup to consider.
The former, not to be confused with wine tasters, is a bowl or dish with two handles known as “ears”, which stick out horizontally opposite each other from the lip of the piece. In Scotland, they are called a “quaich”, although these were more likely to hold wine or spirits, which only adds to the confusion.
Naturally enough, porringers were used to serve porridge, but bread, milk, soup, gruel and stew would also have found their way to the table in such vessels and were popular from the 1600s.
Chances are they evolved from the earlier posset cup and they too are similar in design and shape. They were used (surprise) for serving posset, which was made with hot milk, mixed with ale, wine, or spirits, usually flavoured with spices and favoured particularly as a nightcap.
Varieties of the recipes were served to invalids and infants.
The main difference between the two, however, is that the posset cup tended to be somewhat deeper and came with a lid (the specialist would call this a “cover”).
However, you’ll find porringers without lids and posset cups with spouts, and all the above come in a variety of materials aside from silver including wood, pewter, glass, horn, porcelain and gold.
But back to wine tasters. Or were they used simply to serve spices or condiments rather than a device for the wine connoisseur?
As I said, you could spend a lifetime researching the subject, which is what Jeremy Hebblethwaite has done, forming in the process one of the most comprehensive collections, to be offered at auction later this month.
Often mis-attributed to Shakespeare, a couplet from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam sums up the function of the tastevin or wine taster.
“The wine-cup is the little silver well/Where truth, if truth there be, doth dwell.” If only.
The shallow form of these relatively uncommon little cups was intended to demonstrate a wine’s clarity and quality, their often convex base permitting the maximum amount of light to penetrate the wine, so that the taster can see any cloudiness or sediment.
Often produced in silver or glazed ceramic so as not to affect taste, later decorative examples were produced in a variety of other media.
In his research papers, Mr Hebblethwaite writes that wine tasters have three roles: “Firstly, they are for tasting wine from the barrel to see if it is ready to be bottled. Secondly, for the sommelier or host to taste the wine to see that it is as it should be, before offering it to the diner, and for the king or queen’s taster to see that the wine is not poisoned.
“The third role is largely decorative and for presentation. Many of the fragile ones in the collection come into this category.”
An example of the latter is the Russian “kovsch”, which was originally intended purely as a drinking vessel, several examples of which are included in the collection.
Dating back to the 10th century, when wooden versions of the single-handed scoop-shaped ladles were used for beer and mead, the kovsch developed into highly decorative objects with elaborate multi-coloured enamel decoration, much favoured by the tsars who gave examples made by their court jeweller Carl Fabergé (of imperial Easter eggs fame), to favoured guests.