Rounded, wheel-thrown 17th century Portuguese faience Holy Water pot decorated in cobalt-blue on a tin-white enamel glaze. The border is defined by the accentuated flaring lip from where the dented handle protrudes, while the tightly strangled base is highlighted by a cylindrical edge.

The body is decorated with an oval framed cartouche fully filled with the “Ângulo” family crest, framed on each side by symmetrical scrolls of branches of “Chinese pine”. The handle is defined by raised elements, randomized in the first firing, and by lateral countersinking sections pressed manually by the potter before the application of the tin glaze, and decorated in cobalt-blue with diagonal lines reinforcing the detail.

According to Aníbal Pinto de Faria, the gold heraldic with five green roundels, broken in silver and placed in saltire, belongs to the Ângulo family, descendants of a son of King Angulo of Scotland in the late 12th century, who settled in the Kingdom of Leon in the early 13th century and from there came into Portugal at an unknown date. It is recorded that one member of the family settled in Malacca in the late 16th century, acquiring considerable wealth and adopting thereafter an aristocratic lifestyle.

A similar piece, with oval cartouche filled with a characteristically Christian closed crown and eastern influenced scrolls, is known at the Lüneburg Museum in Northern Germany, city with a record of important Portuguese faience archaeological finds, suggesting the likelihood of regular trading relations with Portugal and Spain.

This particular Holy Water pot has characteristics typical of the pieces produced for Northern Europe, particularly for the Hanseatic League market, which evolves from the 1620s, later than that of the Low Countries. Considering that comparatively this market was less familiar with Chinese Porcelain, the purpose in this case, rather than copying oriental models, was to adopt an exotic decorative grammar that could combine a faraway flavour with erudite European references closer to everyday use, in hybrid and original objects that would promote and privilege creative freedom in an uncompromising yet exuberant brushstroke.

Pieces produced for Northern European markets have a wider range of shapes than those exported to the Low Countries, market which favoured more exuberant display pieces. In the former it is discernible a taste for hollow shaped pieces, particularly wine jugs, adopting a more fantasized but simultaneously more conservative decorative language, evoking exoticism but in a broader European taste context.

The decorative language of these pieces is often characterized by a profusion of heraldic motifs of local families or cities, and monograms of the family that commissioned them; in some cases the iconography adopted is related to a wine theme, a matrimonial alliance or other major celebratory occasion to which the object related and because of which it is often dated.

Bibliography:

BAUCHE, Ulrich, Lissabon – Hamburg Fayenceimport Für Den Norden, Hamburg, Museum Für Kunst Und Gewerbe, 1996.

CALADO, Rafael Salinas, “Aspectos da Faiança Portuguesa do século XVII e alguns antecedentes históricos”, in Faiança Portuguesa de 1600 a 1660, Lisboa, Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros e Amesterdam, Amsterdams Historisch Museum, 1987, pp. 8 / 17.

CASIMIRO, Tânia Manuel, Faiança Portuguesa nas Ilhas Britânicas – dos Finais do Século XVI aos inícios do Século XVIII, Dissertação de Doutoramento em História, Arqueologia, FCSH/UNL, 2010.

KEIL, Luís, “A Faiança de Hamburgo e as suas analogias com a cerâmica portuguesa do século XVII” in Boletim da Academia Nacional de Belas Artes, vol. III, Lisboa, 1938, pp. 44 a 47.

PAIS, Alexandre Nobre, “Fabricado no Reino Lusitano o que antes nos vendeu tão caro a China: a produção de Faiança em Lisboa, entre os reinados de Filipe II e D. João V”, Dissertação de Doutoramento em Artes Decorativas, apresentada à Universidade Católica Portuguesa (Porto), Escola das Artes, Porto, 2012.