Day 217 - Tankard
When I got back home and looked at an online map of the Met, I realized that the gallery I visited today is actually an extension of the one I visited last time. It's a bit hard to tell, since gallery numbers are placed high on the dark, rather dimly lit walls. In contrast, explanatory placards are placed low, requiring me to stoop and crouch in order to read them. The drama of these galleries has some costs. Further, I suspect that visitors are expected to get a good deal of information from "acoustiguides" available on their cell phones (at no cost, unlike the audioguides the Met previously rented out).
In any event, the objects I see today and their explanations reprise the theme of increasing British craftsmanship and technical skill over the course of the 16th and 17th centuries. I learn a good deal. For example, I hadn't previously realized that there was an active tapestry manufactory established with royal backing at Mortlake (which, I learn later, is now a suburban area near London). One huge tapestry uses a scene from a little-known (to me, anyway) myth- the destruction of the children of Niobe- as the occasion to depict wonderfully spirited horses. It's evident that British artists' fascination with horses long antedates Stubbs (although I need to acknowledge that the tapestry was woven according to a design by a Flemish artist). Another tapestry, executed in 1674-1676 by a London tapestry weaver, Francis Poyntz, under commission to the Portuguese wife of Charles II, shows a thin, baggy-eyed Don Quixote tilting at windmills. I had no idea that Don Q. was so well known in England just 60 years after the book's publication. (David tells me later that it was an "instant international bestseller.") Several clocks provide examples of technological innovation. On view are a tall standing clock that required winding only every 35 days, a traveling clock watch with an alarm, and a stopwatch. Who knew that these devices date back to the 1600s?!
Flagons and tankards, some highly ornate, display the technical mastery of English silversmiths. Today's object, though, is quite simple: a tankard, perhaps eight inches high and seven inches in diameter at the base, that dates from about 1675 and is engraved with scenes of the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London. The tankard commemorates Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, a London magistrate who was knighted by Charles II for his service during these disasters. It's not entirely clear to me, but I think the scene engraved in the cartouche on the tankard's side depicts the Great Fire. One can easily imagine that the small houses with their peaked roofs, crowded together as they were, were quickly reduced to ashes. The tankards must have held a tremendous amount of ale! Were they strictly commemorative, for display only, I wonder? Or did people just drink a great deal in those days? I imagine ale was safer than most people's drinking water. Speaking of which, does the wavy design along the bottom of the cartouche represent the Thames?
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