1. The Bellarmine Jug 1550-present
The Glossary of Historic Ceramic Terms defines the jug as, a stoneware jug or bottle decorated with a molded bearded human face molded onto the  neck.
Known also as ‘Greybeards’, ‘Barmannskrugen’ or ‘Barbmans’
Bellarmine
second half of the 16th century
A round-bellied,
narrow-necked vessel
with a bearded mask,
at first collectively called Bartmanner (bearded men)
and made at Frechen, near Cologne,
in the 16th century.

2. Earliest dated bellarmine, 1550 Frank Thomas Collection
It was changed in mockery into the likeness of
Cardinal Bellarmine,
and became popular with Protestants under the name bellarmine or grey-beard as a coarse retort to the cardinal's unanswerable arguments against Protestantism in his Controversies.
It is now obsolete,
but many remain.
New Catholic Dictionary
The notion that bellarmines were ever intended to be representations or caricatures of Bellarmino has been satisfactorily and extensively demolished (the Cardinal was only eight years old when this example was made), and clearly the name was a post hoc jest.

3. but later turned up in many different areas of the continent.
The jugs originated in the Germanic areas of Europe in the early 1500's,
but later turned up in many different areas of the continent.
The origins of the jugs is still a mystery and the connection to
St. Robert Bellarmine is also questioned.
William Cartwright, The Ordinary, 1634 –, English author and divine. An ardent royalist and disciple of Ben Jonson, he had a high reputation as a preacher and author. In addition to his poems, which are now almost entirely forgotten, Cartwright wrote plays, of which The Ordinary (1634) and The Royal Slave (1636) were the most successful.
It is not until William Cartwright’s play The Ordinary in 1634 that the term bellarmine
is used to describe the jug, by which time Cardinal Bellarmino,
had been dead for a dozen years.

4. Grey-white glazed Bellarmine, 1585. Fitzwilliam Museum.
Bellarmine with Tudor arms and inscription of Elizabeth I, British Museum.

5. Beardman jugs are stoneware: water-resistant and durable, made from dense opaque non-porous clay fired at temperatures of 1200°-1280° C (2191°-2336° F).
The clay turns white, buff, gray, or red and is glazed for aesthetic reasons.
STONEWARE: Clay which can be fired within 2% of total vitrification  or less are considered to be stoneware. Stoneware clays are usually made up of blended clay bodies to produce a malleable, strong clay which can be worked on the potters’ wheel and fired to a vitreous state. Color and texture of stoneware clays can vary quite a lot.

6. Stonewares were imported from Europe to the American Colonies
until the end of the Revolutionary War.
Germany and England were the largest producers and exporters of stoneware. American production began in the mid 18th century and
both imitated and competed with the
European imports despite trade restrictions.
Large scale manufacture did not occur until
immediately after the Revolutionary War.
The large centers in the North spread from
New Jersey and New York into
New England.
The southern centers were concentrated in Philadelphia and eastern Pennsylvania. Over time, more potteries started and began spreading further south.
The tradition of salt glaze and alkaline glaze stoneware continued there well into the mid 19th century.

7. Jug bodies were made on a potter's wheel
Jug bodies were made on a potter's wheel. After that the handle was fitted. Relief decorations including the beard face were prepared separately in molds. The molds were usually short-lived, especially those for the beard face; sometimes they were used for only a few jugs each, which results in the many different figures shown.
The lower part of the beard was damaged, enabling us to see how the face was applied to the the jug.

8. Bartmann jug with pewter lid Bartmann jug from Cologne 1535-50
Stoneware salt-glaze German Rhineland, late sixteenth century
(National Museums and Galleries of Wales)
Bartmann jug from Cologne
Dark grey clay body with salt glaze. Decorated rectangular bearded face mask, foliage, fruit and blossoms and lion mask roundels.
Found in London. (Museum of London)
The greybeard or Bartmann jugs and bottles are now amongst the most popular pieces on display from Cologne, and it seems likely that they were intended for the luxury end o fhte market. They were skillfully made, and the applied relief ornament is especially striking. The bearded face of a man or mask is applied to the throat or neck of the bulbous jugs, and molded and sprigged intertwined oak leaves and acorns, or rose briars and flowers, adorn the body of the vessels. The applied decoration was made from molds, and the figurative or botanical friezes, portrait roundels and plant ornaments were copied from pattern books. From around 1500 these pieces have turned bases, and many are seen with pewter lids.
The de;cline in Cologne’s porduction of salt glaze was rapid. Resented by the earthenware potters, and meeting hostility to their firings because of the problems caused by the smoke and pollution from the kilns, the stoneware potters were driven out of their workshops in the city center. Following legal proceedings in 1544, the bailiffs were sent by the City Fathers to knock down the kilns. Salt-glaze production ended within the city of Cologne, with a total ban in 1556,. Many skilled potters migrated to Frechen or Raeren, and took with them their designs and techniques.
The German bellarmine jug and the English stein are the most common forms of brown salt glazed stoneware produced for foreign markets.

9. Salt Firing
The salt glaze characteristic of a beardman jug was formed by throwing common salt into the kiln during firing.
The salt (sodium chloride) interacts with the
silica and alumina
in the clay to form a thin glaze which often has a
slightly pitted surface which potters call 'orange peel'.

10. Salt is usually added to the kiln between 2100F and 2400F.
Salt being adding in angle iron, other methods include paper wrapped "salt burritos" or by ladling damp salt into the firebox with long handled metal scoop.
 Salt is usually added to the kiln between 2100F and 2400F.

11. Today many potters are adding soda ash to achieve effects similar to salt firing.

12. Vocabulary
Spies-A hole left in the front and back of kiln at different levels to enable the pottter to view atmosphere, cones and draw rings during firing.
Cones-Most accurate way of determining temperature during a firing. Placed in different parts of the kiln they will also indicate any variation of temperature.
Draw Rings-drawing out trial rings of clay from the kiln is a way of judging how the salting is proceeding. The ‘draw rings’ should be made from the same clays that have been used to make the wares.

13. Cones and Draw Rings
Before firing
Cones and Draw Rings
After firing
Watching the cones through the spy hole

14. Drawing a ring by inserting an iron bar through the ring,
then carefully lifting it out of the kiln through the spy hole.

15. triple applied crowned oval medallions
Color is added to stoneware by dipping in a slip (liquid clay) before firing. Blue and purple wares were first developed at Raeren from c.1587: the blue color came from cobalt, and purple from manganese. Siegburg wares are usually off-white.
triple applied crowned oval medallions
of the arms of the City of Amsterdam;
splashes of cobalt on bearded mask
brown mottled tiger surface
height: 8" base diameter: 4¼" 1590
6 5/8” x 2 5/8”, 1690
splashes of cobalt blue
on mask and each of
three applied medallions
Unusual globular light gray and freckled bulbous triple medallion Bellarmine jug; Holland or low countries; body molded from red clay; surface colors under lustrous lead glaze; handle formed of two twisted cords resembling rope and terminating in three thumb pressed tails; repeating applied oval medallions (1 ¾" x 2") of flower blossoms over leaves; bearded face mask; splashes of cobalt blue on mask and each of three applied medallions; smooth glazed base with sand particles fused into glaze.
height: 6 5/8" base diameter: 2 5/8" circa 1690

16. The lower part of jugs is usually colorless (apart from drips),
Frechen, German
German, 1600
The lower part of jugs is usually colorless (apart from drips),
because the artisan had to hold the jug while dipping it in the slip.

17. The mottled surface may originally have been unintentional, The Frechen potters soon realized that the effect was seen as a quality and should be produced deliberately, as it was in great demand by foreign markets. Many of these ‘getigerten’, or ‘Tiger-ware’, bottles and jugs were given additional value by being embellished with silver mountings when they were imported into England.
Tiger-ware?
Bartmann bottle,
Stoneware salt glaze, 17th century
Iron wash under coarse-speckled salt glaze,
‘Tiger’ware.

18. Salt-glaze stoneware ‘bellarmine’, medallion showing a man holding a cup and staff. This bottle represents the earliest salt-glaze stoneware made in England.
Imports to Britain
The first salt-glaze pots seen in Britain were those imported from Germany as early as the mid-fourteenth century.
The majority of the brown stoneware bottles from the Rhineland were shipped to London from the Low Countries, together with the wine and beer that was decanted from the casks into the vessels.
During the second half of the sixteenth century, London became a redistribution center for the imported Rhenish stoneware.
The goods would be re-exported to all the other British ports, around East Anglia as far north as Newcastle on the east coast, and right round the southern ports, into Bristol in the west and some as far north as Scotland. The vast trade in Rhenish stoneware, supplied from various centers, reached a high point during the seventeenth century. In the first half of that century alone, it is estimated that over twenty million of these mass-produced stoneware vessels were imported to London.

19. bearing the insignia of
Height 21.1cm. ,
A rare stoneware
salt-glaze bottle
bearing the insignia of
the crown and thistle
and
the initials ‘CR’
(Charles II)

20. In Anthony Wood’s ‘Pocket Almanacs’,
the entry for 30 December 1677
‘One of the followers of Exeter Coll., when Dr. John Prideaux was rector, as tis said, sent his servitour after 9:00 at night
to fetch some ale from the alehouse.
When he came home with it under his gowne, the proctor met him and ask’d him what he made out so late and
what he had under his gowne.
He answered that his master had sent him to the stationer’s to borrow Bellarmine and that it was Bellarmine that he had under his arme;
and so went home.
Whereupon in following times, a bottle with a great belly was called a "Bellarmine",
as it is to this day.’ Dr. John Prideaux was a Rector of Exeter College from 1612 until 1643, so that –
the term bellarmine was in use in the first half of the seventeenth century

21. John Dwight 1671–98,
English potter, founder of the Chelsea porcelain factory. The registration in 1671 of his patent for the "Mystery of transparent earthenware …" is the first certain recorded event of his life. He is considered to have laid the foundation of the pottery industry in England and to have set a standard not excelled elsewhere. There are examples of his work at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum.
Height 26cm; 1685
This tall ‘bellarmine’, still containing the remnants of a charm against witchcraft. The unusual proportions of this bellarmine together with the crude mask and rudimentary seal suggest that this bottle is not of continental origin. Witches’ bottles were commonly used during the seventeenth century and were usually buried under the hearth or threshold as protection against witchcraft.
(Jonathan Horne)

22. Bellarmine Jugs continue to be excavated today
Bellarmine Jugs continue to be excavated today. Jugs have been found in Iceland, Maine, New Jersey

23. The Popham colonists abandoned the fort after a year
Bath, Maine,
near the mouth of the
Kennebec River, English colonists, with George Popham as their leader, established Fort St. George in 1607, the same year Jamestown, Virginia, was founded.
The Popham colonists abandoned the fort after a year
and the site appears to have been vacant for two centuries.
This fact becomes the major archaeological importance of the
Fort St. George site:
it means that we can now look at that critical, initial year of
English colonization in considerable detail and begin to understand what life of the colony was like in

24. The focus of the Popham project archaeologists during their summer 2000 excavations was to locate a building thought to have been occupied by a man named Raleigh Gilbert.
Gilbert was second in command of the colony and probably a distant relative of George Popham. He was also the nephew of, and named after, Sir Walter Raleigh. Artifacts found at Raleigh Gilbert's house point toward its occupant as being a man of high status due to the type and quality of certain objects, like the ones shown here-
-fragments from a 17th century, German-made stoneware "Bellarmine" jug.

25. This Bartmann jug was excavated in 1610 within the walls of James Fort
This Bartmann jug was excavated in 1610 within the walls of James Fort. It has three medallions around its belly consisting of a coat-of-arms depicting a crowned shield that has been divided into four quarters. The first and third quarters each exhibit a single lion passant, which means that he is walking with his right paw raised. The second and fourth quarters each have two lions passant. In the first quarter, which is the upper left-hand corner of the shield, there is a heraldic device known as a fess with a label on chief. This is the band across the upper third of the escutcheon that is carrying three stylized fleurs-de-lis. It is this label that identifies the medallion as Italian and, more specifically, as representing a member of the Tuscan Anjou party of Guelfs who from medieval times were staunch supporters of the Pope.
Guelf coats-of-arms have never before been recorded on German stoneware. Further, there is no documented trade of the ware in Italy, so the Bartmann jug from Pit 1 is extremely rare. It must have been commissioned by an individual, perhaps an Italian merchant, who had trade or other contacts with northwest Europe.