Mazer (drinking vessel)

A mazer is a special type of wooden drinking vessel, a wide cup or shallow bowl without handles, with a broad flat foot and a knob or boss in the centre of the inside, known technically as the print or boss. They vary from simple pieces all in wood to those ornamented with metalwork, often in silver or silver-gilt. They use dense impervious woods such as maple, beech and walnut wood. They are a north European medieval tradition, mostly made from the 11th (or earlier) to the 16th centuries.

Etymology

A form of the word ''mazer'' may have existed in Old English, but the evidence for this is slight. (The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' records speculation, for example, that the word occurs in the place-name '' Maserfield'' whose etymology is, however, uncertain.) The modern English word instead derived from Middle English ''mazer'' (and its variant spellings); this word was borrowed from Anglo-Norman, a dialect of Old French. Middle English or Anglo-Norman also gave the word to Welsh, as ''masarn'' ('maple, sycamore') and ''dysgl masarn'' ('mazer bowl').mazer, n.1.
, ''Oxford English Dictionary Online'', 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

The Old French word ''mazre'' and its variants in turn derive from German, and it is clear that the word must have existed in Common Germanic, where it can be reconstructed as *''masuraz''. In the West Germanic languages it is found as Old Saxon ''masur'' ('swelling') and Old High German ''masar'' ('knot or swelling of a tree'), and later in the Middle Ages as Middle Dutch ''māser'' ('knot or swelling of a tree', especially a maple), Middle Low German ''māser'' ('curly-grained wood'), Middle High German ''maser'' ('curly-grained wood, excrescence on the maple and other trees, drinking cup made of curly-grained wood'). In the North Germanic languages it appears as Old Icelandic ''mǫsurr'' ('maple tree, veined wood') — including in the form ''mǫsurr skál'' ('maplewood vessel') — and Swedish ''masur'' ('curly-grained wood').

The Germanic word *''masuraz'' is thought to share its base with Old High German ''māsa'' ('spot, scar') and English ''measles'', a base which may also have influenced the word ''maple''. Whether this word has cognates elsewhere in the Indo-European languages is, however, uncertain.

Description

The examples that have been preserved above ground are generally of the most expensive kind, with large mounts in silver, but some archaeological sites have produced quantities of plain wood mazers, which were no doubt the most common at the time. The wreck of the ''Mary Rose'' is one example of a group find, and the Nanteos Cup a single survival. They are typically between five and eleven inches in diameter.

Ornamented types usually have a rim or "band" of precious metal, generally of silver or silver gilt; the foot and the print being also of metal. There are examples with wooden covers, sometimes with a metal handle, such as the Bute Mazer or Flemish and German mazers in the British Museum. On the outside, but generally not the inside of the metal band there is often an inscription, religious, or convivial, and the print was also often decorated with a sculpted or engraved plare, and sometimes a gem. The Bute Mazer is one of the most elaborate to survive, with a three-dimensional reclining lion rising from the base, and enamelled coats of arms in a circle around it. Saints, the religious monogram '' IHS'', and animals, often no doubt with heraldic significance, are other common decorations of the boss. Many metal pieces that appear to be mazer bosses have been excavated. An example from York Minster grants an indulgence of 40 days remission from Purgatory for all who drink from it.

Later examples may be raised on a stem, perhaps copying the style of covered cups; some from about 1550 onwards are effectively tazzas that are partly in wood. The later mazers sometimes had metal straps between the rim and the foot, as were added to the Bute Mazer. Examples continued to be produced after the main period ended in the 16th century, perhaps with a deliberate sense of traditionalism. Some modern woodturners and silversmiths have continued to produce examples, especially Omar Ramsden.

Mounted examples are turned very finely, often from burr maple from the field maple. Both the wood and the vessels made of it were known as "mazer", so in contemporary accounts sometimes they are referred to as ciphis de mazer (drinking bowl of burr maple wood), and sometimes simply as a "mazer". The best mazers had silver or silver gilt rims added. Commonly prints were also added (a decorated disc in the base of the bowl), and occasionally, normally on later mazers, a silver or gilt foot was also added.

Use

The size of wooden mazers was restricted by the relatively small size of the trees that gave the best dense and grained wood. The addition of a metal band might double the capacity of a mazer. Large ornamented mazers were probably passed around the table for toasts and the like, as some covered cups were, but more ordinary ones may have been regarded as personal within a group such as a household, ship or monastery, no doubt with the leading figures reserving the finer examples for themselves. Evidence from inventories suggests many mazers were given names.

A record of customs at a monastic community in Durham records that each monk has his own mazer "edged with silver double gilt", but also an especially large one called the "Grace cup" was passed around the table after Grace. Another such, called the "Judas cup", was only ever used on Maundy Thursday. Parish churches might be bequeathed mazers, and use them at " church ales" and other parish occasions.
Decorated mazers are often included and briefly described in wills and inventories. In 1395 John de Scardeburgh, rector of Tichmarsh, left twelve mazers, two more than were recorded in an inventory of the treasure of Henry IV of England four years later. But monastic inventories could include dozens, including an exceptional 132 in an inventory of 1328 at Christ Church, Canterbury.

In inventories, normally in medieval Latin, they are called by a variety of names (all the plural forms): "''ciphi'' or ''cuppae de mazero'' or ''de murra, mazeri, cyphi murrae, mazerei'', or ''hanaps de mazer'' (French).

Surviving examples

Over 60 British medieval mazers are known to survive. Many of the English survivals were preserved in Oxbridge colleges, livery companies, hospitals and other institutions going back to the Middle Ages. Relatively few have been passed down in wealthy families, though all such at the time would have owned them; the Bute Mazer is an exception here. A mazer still belonging to All Souls College, Oxford, but on loan to the Ashmolean Museum, was donated to the college in 1437, at the time of its foundation by Thomas Ballard, a landowner in Kent.

Another example in a college is the late 14th-century Swan Mazer of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where a swan surmounts a thin column rising from the boss. If the mazer is filled too full, liquid runs down the column and out of the foot, no doubt a trick played on unwary first-timers dining at the college.

Over the late Middle Ages there is a movement from deep bowls with narrow rims to shallower bowls and much wider rims. In the 13th and 14th century rims tend to be simple and plain, only about 1 cm deep without lettering, 15th and 16th century rims are very characteristic with a very deep (3–4 cm moulded form) often with lettering. One exception to this rule is the mazer which Samuel Pepys drank from in 1660 (on display in the British Museum), the rim of this mazer is hallmarked 1507/8 but it is of the earlier simple form. A good display is at the Museum of Canterbury, where ten 13th and 14th century mazers are shown.

A very fine example in the British Museum, from France or Flanders, probably in the early 15th century, has a very thin wooden bowl, and silver mountings of excellent quality, including enamels, but neither the cup nor the cover have metal on the rim, or ever seem to have done so. The cuir-bouilli travelling-case also survives.
The Watson Mazer
is the earliest in the sequence of Scottish standing mazers, featuring the coat of arms for David Watson of Saughton. Chemical analysis places it in the early 16th century. It is constructed of a maplewood bowl with a silver-gilt band, resting on a silver stem and an inscribed trumpet-shaped foot. Today it is part of the Silver Treasury, level 5 of the Scotland Galleries in Edinburgh."The Watson Mazer" Insperata Floruit
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File:BLW The Robert Chalker Mazer, around 1490.jpg, The "Robert Chalker Mazer", Britain 1480-1500, Victoria and Albert Museum. Maplewood with silver-gilt rim and boss. The boss is engraved with the Trinity, originally enamelled, an unidentified merchant's mark and the inscription ROBERT CHALKER IESUS.
File:Drinking Bowl MET sf1991-411s1.jpg, Britain, 15th-century, The Cloisters
File:Drinking Bowl MET sf1991-411s2.jpg, Side view of the same
File:Mazer with cover MET 193170.jpg, The silver dog handle late 17th-century
File:Mazer robinwood.JPG, Modern rowan and silver mazer by Robin Wood
File:The Watson Mazer.jpg, The Watson Mazer is the earliest in a series of Scottish Standing Mazers from the early 16th Century.

See also

* Nanteos Cup

Notes

References

*Campbell, Gordon, "Mazer", Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press, accessed October 11, 2017
subscription required

*Cherry, John, in: Marks, Richard and Williamson, Paul, eds. ''Gothic: Art for England 1400–1547'', 2003, V&A Publications, London,
*Glenn, Virginia, ''Romanesque and Gothic: Decorative Metalwork and Ivory Carvings in the Museum of Scotland'', 2003, National Museums of Scotland,
* St. John Hope, W.H.,
On the English Medieval Drinking Bowls Called Mazers
Archaeologia 50 (1887), pp. 129-193
*
*Taylor, Gerald, ''Silver'', 1963 (2nd edition), Penguin

*

External links

* {{cite web, last=Eichhorn, first=Markus, title=The Maple Tree, url=http://www.test-tube.org.uk/trees/video_maple.htm, work=Test Tube, publisher=Brady Haran for the University of Nottingham, date=November 2011

The Watson Mazer

Drinkware
German culture
English culture
Belgian culture
Silversmithing