Svafnir Thorvaldson — Playing with Pots: Puzzle Jugs of the Late Medieval and Renaissance

• Name: Svafnir Thorvaldson
• Project title: Playing with Pots: Puzzle Jugs of the Late Medieval and Renaissance
• Location: Shire of Quintavia
• EK Wiki: https://wiki.eastkingdom.org/wiki/Svafnir_Thorvaldson
• Blog: https://thegildedloam.wordpress.com/
• Category: ceramics

I made a puzzle jug inspired by a 16th/17th century example made in Urbino, Italy, currently housed in the Philadelphia Art Museum. Puzzle jugs are prank cups used to trick unsuspecting users into spilling their drink, or as a drinking game to see if they were clever enough to figure out the puzzle. These jugs have perforations in the top, so if you try to drink from the rim, you will spill.  There are multiple nozzles, at first glance it may seem a simple matter of sucking on one of the nozzles, but all are connected, so you cannot make suction without plugging the remaining nozzles. During the renaissance period, puzzle jugs like these were status symbols, as they were rare and required great skill to make. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries puzzle jugs became more basic and mass produced but often featured written challenges or riddles. 

I copied the approximate shape and decorative features such as: the incisions, the snake-like filigree, the handle shape, the nozzles, and the face at the bottom of the handle. I also copied the key features of a puzzle jug: a hollow rim, a hollow channel leading from the bottom to the rim, and extra nozzles.  A medieval potter working in a workshop would have had separate workers who specialized in throwing, decorating, and firing, before passing off the piece to a specialized majolica painter for glazing. I threw and decorated my puzzle jug, and left it as bisqueware.

Extant inspiration: https://www.visitpham.org/objects/92206

More information can be found in my documentation for St. Eligius:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PDvjtAfbJxwNRgRhMPYYPaoZ_NUojNmtHTdmf4EvGGo/edit?usp=sharing