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Lot Essay
The rare form of this pinecone jar with its boldly modelled seeds or scales is reminiscent of the vase in the Fitzwilliam Museum which also incorporates a low-relief female head, see Julia Poole, Italian maiolica and incised slipware in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 187-188, no. 262. Poole attributes the Fitzwilliam example to Deruta 'on the existence of numerous others with moulded scales decorated with lustre overall' (see lot 18 in this sale).
It is not known what jars of this type were used for. Suggested uses include storage for sweets or biscuits, possibly made from pine-nuts, or other substances derived from or containing pine-nuts.1 Poole suggests that they could perhaps have been gifts associated with courtship, or betrothals or weddings.2
1. Perhaps including pinoccate or pignoccate, made from pine-nuts, sugar and whipped egg-whites. For a discussion of this, see T. Wilson and E. Sani, Le maioliche rinascimentali nelle collezioni della Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Perugia, 2007, Vol. II., pp. 360-361.
2. Poole, ibid., p. 187, notes that 'in the medieval health book, Tacuinum Sanitatis, one of the uses of pine-cones was said to be in stimulating the libido. The illustration in the late fourteenth-century Italian MS in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, shows a cone-covered tree and a gentleman handing a cone to a lady'.
It is not known what jars of this type were used for. Suggested uses include storage for sweets or biscuits, possibly made from pine-nuts, or other substances derived from or containing pine-nuts.
1. Perhaps including pinoccate or pignoccate, made from pine-nuts, sugar and whipped egg-whites. For a discussion of this, see T. Wilson and E. Sani, Le maioliche rinascimentali nelle collezioni della Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Perugia, 2007, Vol. II., pp. 360-361.
2. Poole, ibid., p. 187, notes that 'in the medieval health book, Tacuinum Sanitatis, one of the uses of pine-cones was said to be in stimulating the libido. The illustration in the late fourteenth-century Italian MS in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, shows a cone-covered tree and a gentleman handing a cone to a lady'.