James and Elizabeth Greene tankard

A tin-glazed earthenware (delftware) tankard made at the Pickleherring pottery in Southwark. The vessel is decorated in cobalt with the bird-on-rock (Wan Li) pattern and two bands of inscription: the uppermost reading 'JAMES & ELIZABETH GREENE ANNO 1630' and the lower: 'THE GIFT IS SMALL GOODWILL TO ALL'. The tankard was presumably made as a wedding or anniversary gift.

The tankard is illustrated and discussed in Hugh Tait, 'Southwark (alias Lambeth) Delftware and the Potter Christian Wilhelm', ‘Connoisseur’, vols CXLVI & CXLVII (August 1960 and February 1961) - though the date is mistakenly given as 1635. See also F H Garner & M Archer 'English delftware', 1972, pl. 7, Lipski no. 707. Other vessels with similar decoration are dated 1628 and 1629. For other Wan Li decorated pieces in the Museum of London's collection see chargers 13597 & 24368.

Christian Wilhelm, who came to England from the Netherlands in 1604, established his pothouse in Pickleherring, in the parish of St Olave Southwark. Wilhelm began to trade in the manufacture of smalt, a cobalt blue oxide, but when the patent was awarded to fellow-countryman, Abraham Baker in 1605, Wilhelm began a business as a galley pot maker and a brewer of vinegar and aqua-vitae. He seems to have been manufacturing pots by 1612 and in July 1628, Wilhelm was awarded an exclusive patent for the manufacture of galleyware in England and Wales for 14 years. Wilhelm died in 1630 and the business passed to his daughter Mary and her husband Thomas Townsend. For further information on the Pickleherring pothouse see I Davies, 1969 '17th-century delftware potters in St Olave's parish, Southwark, Surrey’, Archaeological Collections, 66, 11-31; F Britton 'The Pickleherring Pottery' in S.L.A.S, December, 1990 and K Tyler et al in ‘London's delftware industry: the tin-glazed industries of Southwark and Lambeth’, MoLAS monograph, 40, 2008.