Porringer, tableware

A porringer with an elaborate single ear of so-called ‘Old English’ type. The straight-sided angular bowl has a central boss accentuated by two turned circles. The circular beaded touch underneath the base has the letters ‘H’ and ‘S’ with a sun or star above and a dot below, the mark of Henry Seagood [Saygood], of Kings Lynn, Norfolk, OP4169. Seagood was apprenticed to his father, Francis and received his freedom in 1667/8. Date: 1667/8-?1682 (see notes below).

Francis Seagood was born in Middlesex and obtained his freedom in London in 1639. He was made free in Norwich in 1645 and had probably moved to Kings Lynn by 1652. Francis paid his dues to the London Company as a ‘Country member’ (see explanatory notes at the beginning of the catalogue, p XXX). In 1682 he sold his ‘good and fashionable’ moulds and his stock-in-trade which strongly suggests that his son Henry had pre-deceased him. (Ricketts, 2001). Francis died in Kings Lynn in 1684.