Handles are found on spouted pitchers, tripod pitchers, spouted bowls, frying pans (handled bowls), pipkins, jugs, and a range of minor forms. Lug handles are the earliest handles found, occurring infrequently on Anglo-Saxon vessels. With their exception all handles are made from one or more rolls of clay fastened to the body at one or both ends, finished and decorated.
A modern studio potter produces a vertical handle by rolling out a coil of clay. This is attached at the top end of the vessel and squeezed in the fist whilst pulling down and out. This action produces an oval-sectioned, slightly tapering handle smoothed into the body at the lower end. The resulting handle is very similar to those found on much post- medieval earthenware and there can be little doubt that the method was used to produce most 17th century and later handles. However, it is also quite clear that this technique was not responsible for many of the medieval handles seen in the region. Most of these appear to have been shaped to their final form before application. Considerable ingenuity has been involved in ensuring that the handles did not fall off. The reasonableness of this precaution is quite justified when one examines the number of vessels whose luted handles have become detached, leaving both body and handle intact.
There are two main ways in which a handle was attached. The most common was by luting it onto the body. To help the handle adhere the vessel surface might be scored or otherwise roughened. This is of course difficult to demonstrate on most vessels and has not been observed.
Another way is for the pot to be pierced and the handle stuck through it. This technique was employed on Malvern Chase tripod pitchers in the 12th century but is otherwise not noted in the region.
One of the most common attachment techniques is to press the handle and body together with thumb impressions. This has the advantage of spreading the area of attachment and ensuring a close join between the two. This is used on some of the earliest handles found; those of Stamford and Winchester-type wares. The number of impressions and their spacing varies from type to type but is often consistent within a range.
The join could be further secured by stabbing or slashing (see below) either the inside or the outside of the handle join. Slashing on the exterior of the pot is by far the most common technique and is found on Minety tripod pitchers in the early to mid 13th century and on many late 13th and 14th century and later jug types.
Slashing on the interior of the handle join is rare but has been noted on 12th century Minety tripod pitchers.
Stabbing on the exterior of the handle join is a common technique on Ham Green and Worcester jugs.
Other known attachment techniques involve pushing the clay of the body into the handle join from the inside, either leaving a depression on the inside or sometimes filling this depression with a separate wad of clay. This technique has not been recognised in the region but is known from East Anglia and the East Midlands (Hayfield, 1980).
There are a few basic handle shapes which tend to be used in the majority of industries.
Rod handles, with circular cross-sections, are found on Malvern Chase tripod pitchers in the 12th century, some 12th century Minety tripod pitchers and on Malvern Chase late 14th and 15th century jugs. With these exceptions the type is rare in the region. The rod handle is the normal type in the London area from the 13th to the late 14th centuries and was present on London jugs from the middle of the 12th century.
Rectangular-sectioned handles are present on most of the 11th to 12th century spouted pitchers but their use died out during the 12th century. Most of the rectangular handles are short, springing from the rim or neck and joining again at the shoulder rather than the girth.
Strap handles (ie. with a roughly hour-glass section or shallow U-section) are by far the most common type. Perhaps the earliest examples in the region are U-shaped handles on Minety tripod pitchers of early to mid 13th century date. The form however is particularly common in the later 13th and 14th centuries and after. Some later examples, for example Malvern Chase 15th to 16th century vessels may have been formed by pulling (see above).
Oval-sectioned handles (mostly formed by pulling) are common on post-medieval vessels of 17th century and later date. The handles on Malvern Chase chafing dishes, also of 16th century date are similarly formed as are the small handles found on Tudor Green and Cistercian ware cups.
Ham Green and Worcester jugs share a variant handle type - a thin oval or sub-rectangular sectioned handle. There is little if any diminution in width of these handles from top to bottom and they are therefore shaped before application.
Complex-sectioned handles are formed by wrapping two or more strips in a third, sometimes to the extent that the decorative effect is lost. It is therefore possible that they had some function other than pure decoration. Certainly the handles would have taken less time to dry than the equivalent size of solid handle. It is also possible that they were imitations of rope or leather prototypes.
Two forms of complex handle are found. Those on Minety tripod pitchers of the 12th century are usually double rods within a third strip whilst those on Newbury C and Oxford Y tripod pitchers are commonly composed of a central twisted pair of rods with single rods on either side, all within an overall wrap of clay.
Handles were often highly decorated. Some of this decoration might actually have a practical purpose, such as that suggested above for the complex-sectioned handles: firstly, to aid the joining of the body to the handle and secondly to pierce the handle to enable it to dry out more quickly. However, many thick solid handles exist and were obviously fired without ill effect so that a purely decorative function is just as likely.
Many of the decorative techniques used are the same as those used on other parts of the vessel, for example roller- stamping, comb.ing or grooving, but a few are restricted to handles and other applied features.
Stabbing is a term coined by Barton (1963) to indicate the deep impression of a rounded blunt tool. Such stabbing occurs on Ham Green, Worcester type and some Hereford A7b jugs in the early to mid 13th century.
A variant type of stabbing involves the use of a circular-sectioned tool (a twig or awl?). This 'fine stabbing' is found on vessels from the Thames basin, for example Oxford AM jugs. An unusual variant occurs on some Newbury C jugs and other vessels from Berkshire which have the stabbing on one side of the handle only rather than along the top of the vessel.
Slashing on the other hand is the use of a sharp wedge- shaped tool, presumably an iron knife, to create deep gashes in the handle. There are quite significant differences between types in the handle slashing both in the size of the slashes and in their layout but the most common type in the region is for the slashes to be about 15 to 20mm long and a maximum of 3 to 4mm wide and for a variable number of slashes to be present along the top of the handle at the join with the rim followed by a column of diagonal slashes down the handle. Such a pattern is typical on 13th century Minety tripod pitchers for example.
Rectangular handles, 10 - 20mm deep set horizontally on the vessel are known on some Malvern Chase conical bowls in the 16th century and on large Newent Glasshouse bowls of the late 17th to 18th centuries. They are rare and were attached by luting only. Considering their rarity, a high number of detached examples are found.
Horizontal loop handles are rare but is found on some post-medieval vessels, principally large bowls ('pancheons') and open cups. There are two main forms, strap and rod. The large types are usually strap handles (for example on Stroat ware) whilst the smaller are rods (for example on Hampshire - Surrey border ware).
'Cauldron' handles are very distinctive but very rare in the region. The handles consist of two straight sections meeting at a sharp angle in direct imitation of cast metal cauldrons. They are invariably circular-sectioned. In the medieval period the two most common types having these handles are Coarse Border ware and Dutch Red Earthenware. The Dutch vessels usually have the handle pinched in at the angle. These handles always occur as opposing pairs and were used for suspension.
A small number of vessel types have horizontal handles attached at one end only which, although sometimes bent over at the free end and thus possibly used to suspend the vessel when not in use, were used primarily for gripping the vessel whilst carrying it. Dripping dishes invariably have horizontal handles as do pipkins. The shape of these handles is determined by their function and all are solid, tapering from the body to the end with a concave upper surface, suitable for gripping with the thumb. The dripping dish handles are usually wider than those on pipkins but both are essentially sub-rectangular or oval with the upper surface con.cave.
Feet can be applied either by luting alone or as plugs set into the base. Unlike handles, no evidence for feet being pushed right through the wall of a pot has been found.
There are three quite separate shapes of foot used, circular-sectioned, short rectangular-sectioned and tall rectangular-sectioned ('cauldron type').
Circular-sectioned feet are found on virtually all tripod pitchers in the region, from Newbury C to Hereford A2. most are plugged into the base and are set there rather than at the base angle. They taper slightly from top to bottom and are virtually never decorated (a few have stabbed holes in their base, presumably having the same function as stabbing or slashing on handle joins).
Short rectangular-sectioned feet occur on three tripod pitcher types; Hereford A4, Hen Domen type and Shrewsbury type, forming a tight regional grouping.
Later medieval vessels also have short rectangular- sectioned feet. They are found on Malvern Chase dripping dishes in the late 13th to 14th century (a single foot, just below the handle) and on Malvern Chase skillets, and pipkins.
Tall rectangular-sectioned feet are found on Malvern Chase, Minety and Coarse Border ware cisterns in the late 14th and 15th centuries and on Coarse Border ware Cauldrons. These feet are often slashed, either because of the great thickness of clay present or merely for decoration.
All footed vessels have three feet, although it would be quite feasible to make a footed vessel with four or more. This is in contrast with thumbed bases where group thumbing (which is in effect a foot, but pushed out of the body rather than applied) can occur three, four or more times on a pot.
There are three ways in which a spout or lip can be formed from a vessel rim. Firstly, it can be pulled out with one finger whilst the rim is supported on either side to control the action; secondly, it can be pinched in from either side, whilst a middle finger keeps the spout open; thirdly, a mixture of the two techniques can be carried out. Most spouts in the region were of the pulled type, the earliest being on early 13th century Minety and Hereford A2 tripod pitchers.
By whatever method the spouts were formed virtually all were of a single finger width and were not more than 20mm deep. Outside of the region more elaborate spouts were made by this technique. At Kingston-on-Thames some jugs were made with deep spouts which extended from the rim down to the shoulder of the vessel. These were of late 13th to 14th century date and were made in imitation of metal ewers.
Italian Archaic Maiolica and North Italian Marbled Slipware jugs often have huge pinched in spouts, known as trefoil spouts. Although these may have influenced tin-glaze potters in the Netherlands in the late 15th and 16th century there is no evidence for their manufacture in this country.
There are two forms of added spout, those formed of a complete cylinder of clay (tubular spouts) and those formed of a slab of clay, attached to the vessel at the sides and base.
Tubular spouts are themselves subdivisible into free- standing types, spouts attached to the rim and neck of the vessel (D-shaped tubular spouts) and narrow free-standing spouts usually secured to the rim of the vessel by struts or slabs of clay.
Free-standing tubular spouts are found mainly on 11th to 12th century spouted pitchers. They were formed by inserting a lump of clay into the shoulder of the vessel and then piercing it with a cylindrical tool and smoothing the join.
Both cylindrical and D-shaped tubular spouts occur on tripod pitchers. They vary in their diameter. The larger examples may have been formed by wrapping a slab of clay into a cylinder whilst the narrower examples were made on a former (perhaps just a stick). In most cases it appears that the spout was not inserted through the body. Instead, the hole through the body was created after the spout has been attached. Cylindrical tubular spouts, usually secured with one or more horizontal strips, are found, for example, on Minety 12th century tripod pitchers and Newbury C tripod pitchers whilst D-shaped tubular spouts (ie. wider spouts secured at either side with vertical strips) occur on Malvern Chase 12th century tripod pitchers.
The narrow free-standing tubular spouts occur rarely on Stamford ware jugs (Kilmurry, 1980, Form 24) with a single example known in Hereford A7b. Examples are found on highly decorated jugs from the Midlands and north-east of England, for example Scarborough ware (Farmer, 1979). Added slabs of clay smoothed into the body on three sides have been used to form spouts from the beginning of the 13th century and get their name from the bridge of clay left at the rim. On some spouts this bridge is removed with a knife, to form a 'cut- bridge spout'. This form is characteristic of south-west France and occurs on both jugs and pegaux.
The shape of the spout varies but is usually one-finger wide with a rounded V-cross-section. The top of the spout is usually just slightly higher than that of the rim. The earliest spouts of this form are those on Ham Green and Worcester jugs with a few exam.ples found on Malvern Chase and Minety 13th century tripod pit.chers. This form is common on many late 13th to 14th century jug types.
Variant forms are rare. A distinctive variant is the 'Parrot beak' spout found on south-west French jugs. This form is much taller than the rim of the vessel and is much narrower than the common English form (which is also found on south-west French jugs).
Another distinctive variant, only found in this country on imported vessels, is the 'Gutter' spout found for example on some Andalusian lustreware jugs. This form is very long but comparatively shallow.