Description: English delft cylindrical gallipot, storage jar, or drug jar with blue decoration. 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. Although associated with doctors and apothecaries until the late 18th century, they were ideal general-purpose storage containers for such items as groceries and 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. The jar has an everted rim, which could be covered with parchment secured with a string; and is decorated with four blue bands around the top third of the jar; four groups of alternately erect and inverted patterns of five-lined diminishing arcs (pyramid shape) around the middle; and four blue bands around the bottom third of the flat base.
Subjects: Pottery; glaze (coating by location) Link to share this object record: https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+91.150 |