Decorated with in trailed slip decoration with tulips in panels below a band of letters:
TC : H(and M?) D : AE : RK : WS : RF : 1688
There are two other bragget pots that form a distinct group with ours. One in the British Museum and the other is in the Victoria & Albert Museum. They both share the same decorative scheme and date but bear different initials around the rim.
The one in the BM reads: ‘EP : RF WS : TD : A : TG : 1688
The one in the V&A reads: ‘TG : A[or H] : AD : ME : RP : WS : RF : 1688’
Another more frequently seen group of bragget pots are inscribed with the phrase ‘the best is not too good for you’ and sometimes bear dates a decade or so later.
Gardiner Museum, Toronto
Bragget pots differ from posset pots, in that the latter has a spout protruding from the base of the body. Bragget is a traditional sweet drink made of honey and ale fermented together or ale flavoured with honey with spices, it has been known since at least the 14th century and was mentioned by Geoffrey Chaucer in the Miller’s Tale of around 1386. Posset on the other hand was a spiced drink where hot milk is curdled by adding it to wine or ale, the mixture was then drunk through the low spout.
The Miller’s Prologue, The Canterbury Tales
Hir mouth was sweete as bragot or the meeth,
Or hoord of apples leyd in hey or heeth.
Wynsynge she was, as is a joly colt,
Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt.
Her mouth was sweet as ale and honey or mead,
Or a hoard of apples laid in hay or heather.
Skittish she was, as is a spirited colt,
Tall as a mast, and straight as an arrow.[1]
Condition:
Some cracks and chips, no restoration
Provenance:
Sir Victor and Lady Gollancz; Sotheby’s, 19 November 1968, lot 13
Jonathan Horne
Syd Levethan: The Longridge Collection, Christie’s 10-11 June 2012, lot 1105
Private collection, London
References:
Grigsby 2000
Leslie B. Grigsby, The Longridge Collection of English Slipware and Delftware, (Jonathan Horne Publications, 2000)
SOLD
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[1] Translation taken from https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/millers-prologue-and-tale