Page 124

 
                SLIPWARE       Beverage Wares 
                Posset Pots and Multihandled Cups 
$65. POSSET POT 
Staffordshire 
Dated 1671 
H.: 6" (15.2 cm); 
Diam. (body): 7" (178 cm); 
Diam. (with handles): 9 5/8" (24.4 cm); 
Diam. (with spout): 8 1/8" (20,6 cm) 
BODY CLAY: Fine-grained red-brown. 
LEAD GLAZE: Overall, excluding bot- 
tom (with glaze overrun from sides). 
SHAPE: Thrown, with single spout, 
Pulled handles, nearly flat on interiors, 
convex on exteriors. Slightly concave 
bottom. 
SLIP GROUND: Cream-colored, 
Overall, excluding lower extreme of 
wall and bottom. 
DECORATION: Combed, trailed, and 
jeweled. Rim inscribed "GOD SAVE 
THE KING AND BLESS HIM." Panels 
flanking spout inscribed "1671" and "RF"; 
back panel inscribed "IEW.' 
Published: Morley-Fletcher and Mcilroy, 
Pictorial History, p 265, pl. 13: Grigsby, Dated 
Slipware, p. 875, pl. 4, and p. 880, pl. 16. 
This unique posset pot is among the earliest examples of dated, English,
combed slipware. The controlled, fine-grained combing and trailed and jeweled
inscriptions also are indicative of late seventeenth- to early eighteenth-century
production. Uninscribed cups of somewhat similar profile but with less ele-
gantly executed combing, much of it vertically oriented rather than swirled,
have been excavated near the modern Sadler pottery in Burslem, Staffordshire.'
Combed patterns of the swirling type are used to imitate feathers on some
slip- 
ware owl jugs (see no. S81). 
    Cylindrical delftware posset pots with more elaborate handles and, occa-
sionally, feet also bear dates in the 1670s (see no. 1)275).1 Among slipware
ves- 
sels the posset pot shown here is similar in profile to more well-known trailed
and jeweled cups with rims inscribed "THE BEST IS NOT TOO GOOD FOR YOU"
(nos. S68-S71) and dates to as late as 1725.' Rather than combing, the panels
on these cups display trailed floral patterns. 
1. Stoke-on-'Trent collection; Barker comments 
(April 1997)1 
2. Lipski and Archer, Dated Delftware, 
nos. 901-904. 
3. Stoke-on-Trent collection (no. 2780). 
124 The Longridge Collection 
I