Description:
English delft cylindrical gallipot, storage jar, or drug jar with an everted rim, which could be covered with parchment secured with a string, and decorated with two sets of varying-width blue bands, five around the top and five around the flat, flared base. According to Reginal French, the antique dealer from whom this gallipot was obtained, it came from "Root family, opposite Hawks on Route 5, Wapping." Made through the 17th and 18th centuries, gallipots, which are simple cylindrical jars often with geometric designs, were used extensively for medical preparations before labeled drug jars began to appear. The term may derive from ships (galleys) in which the pottery came from northern Europ, or from the corruption of the Flemish word "geleyerspot" for glazed pottery. Although associated with doctors and apothecaries until the late 18th century, they were ideal general-purpose storage containers for the general storage of numourous material (foodstuffs, cosmetics, herbs, paints, powders, pigments), and are frequently mentioned in 17 and 18th-century cooking and receipt books. Similar gallipot fragments have been found in excavations in London and throughout the colonies, including Virginia, Middletown, Connecticut, Maine, and here in Deerfield from the Williams family. "Gallipots" appear in many Connecticut Valley probate inventories beginning in the late 17th century, and the ubiquitous form perserveres for over a century. The 1698/9 inventory of Deerfield's Thomas Wells listed "One Glass Bottle one Pewter Bottle one Gally Pott" all valued at 1 shilling. As late as 1783, Sarah Wells (1701-1783) of Deerfield owned "5 gelly pots" valued at 6 pence. A note from Reginal French reads: "Probably from Fore Street factory in Lambeth, Abigail Griffith, proprietress. Type of jar probably used in home as well as shop with outcurving top so that paper could be tied over, as in some of our native redware jars. This type was apparently commoner in New England that any other. Date: probably made over a long period of time. Used at Ticonderoga where shards are preserved."
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2156.1 |
