A silver jug with a bowl - an attribute of the elite culture of the table in early-modern Central Europe. Introductory remarks

Abstract

Ceremonial handwashing was an important introduction to formal public meals of social elites (feasts, banquets). This tradition, going back to antiquity and cultivated in the Middle Ages, was continued in the early-modern period. The handwashing was performed using a jug and a bowl. Information about such sets is scattered in various types of sources; there are examples surviving in museums, iconography and mentions in written sources from the 16th–18th c. The last type includes inventories, testaments, letters, travel accounts, encyclopedias, treatises on court ceremonial, manuals, handbooks, and documents concerning purchases, donations, confiscations and thefts. Jugs made of noble metals, gemstones, pearls and other luxurious, often exotic materials were very precious, also due to their aesthetic value. They were produced by goldsmiths from France, the Netherlands, leading German centres of this craft (Augsburg, Nürnberg) and local centres (e.g. Gdańsk, Poznań). Those luxurious vessels were used at royal courts all over Europe from the Iberian Peninsula to Moscow, including the Habsburg court in Vienna and the Vasa court in Warsaw. They were also found at the courts of electors and lesser rulers of the Reich. As to aristocracy (mag-nates), the author focuses on examples from Poland and Bohemia, finding a confirmation that such artefacts were widely used in residences of the elite. The same applied to middle nobility, but in this group silver handwashing jugs were usually bought by those that aspired to social advancement, e.g. the king’s courtiers or people marrying into senatorial families. Such jugs were also owned by Catholic clergy (from parish priests to bishops) and by burgher patricians (for example in Cracow).As to the functions of jug-and-basin sets, smaller ones were used not only for public hand-washing, but also, as indicated by several mentions, for everyday toilet in private. They were also treated as an investment; they were kept in treasuries, counting among the most expensive valuables. Before feasts, gests could admire them among other silverware exhibited on special tables or shelves. They were also used for decorating grand rooms of residences (e.g. the Sil-berbufett in the Berlin Castle) to enhance the prestige of the family. Being precious and at the same time easy to transport, they also served in policy-making as gifts brought by envoys to foreign rulers and other influential personages. The same applied to domestic politics. They were also bequeathed in last wills to relatives, friends, patrons and clients, or to help the salva-tion of the soul, to Church institutions. Sometimes noble metal vessels were replaced by tin ones. Even the richest families used tin tableware on weekdays, including handwashing jugs and bowls, instead of silverware. The supply of tin was much larger than that of silver. In the households of petty nobility silverware could not be afforded and there were only tin vessels, including jugs and bowls.