1 86 ON SOME FRAGMENTS OF ENGLISH EARTHENWARE. 



them was to be placed at the banquet before each person. Here, 

 consequently, the three handles were nothing more than a mere 

 ornamentation, reproducing on a reduced scale the characteristics 

 of a well-known vessel of larger dimensions. At Tickenhall small 

 tygs of the same description have been frequently discovered. 

 Like ours, they were made of dark clay, thickly coated over with a 

 rich glaze, coloured in brown with oxide of manganese. Brown 

 and black ware, to which the English people always showed a great 

 partiality, was produced all over England in a similar style ; but 

 we cannot trace it much farther back than the period of slip ware, 

 which was made conjointly with it — that is to say, during the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From our sketch, it can be 

 seen that the form departs somewhat from the simple and tradi- 

 tional outlines of the Staffordshire Tyg. Its high and elegant foot, 

 and its upper part opening as a calyx, recall the shape of the 

 drinking glasses of the time, from whicli it was probably borrowed. 

 A great number of handles ingeniously disposed round the centre, 

 are often to be noticed on old glass vessels. 



Lastly, we have to mention a huge knob, which accompanied 

 the piece described above, and appears to have formed the top of 

 some piece difficult to identify. We may perhaps venture the 

 supposition that it made part of one of those curious contrivances 

 in earthenware which crowned the roof of the dove-cotes that our 

 forefathers liked to erect in their gardens. The piece of quaint 

 design represented a small edifice, perforated on the sides, with 

 big holes to allow the coming in and out of the birds, and, 

 placed at the top corner of the gable, it terminated the building 

 in a tasteful manner. We remember having seen one of them 

 in a good state of preservation ; and the reproductions of such 

 pieces, on a reduced scale, are to be seen in many collections. 

 It is not perhaps useless to say that this knob is made of a clay 

 perfectly white, covered with a glaze of sulphide of lead, which 

 imparts to it a yellow tint. This clay is peculiar to Derbyshire, 

 and does not exist in the district of the "Potteries." There, 

 when the first attempts at a white ware, glazed with salt, were 



