Bronze Age Gold from Wales

Pot or Schnelle, in creamy white stoneware, lightly covered with a smear glaze, tapering body with three turned ribs/cordons at the base, sides with three applied relief panels moulded with 1. Sampson killing the lion, 2. Delilah betraying Sampson (interior, with figure to right cutting his hair) and 3. Samson bearing off the gates of Gaza (armoured figure, walking to right carrying pair of doors above his head, all in arched cartouches, with floral scrolls and grotesques above, and an inscribed strapwork cartouche below, one supported by two naked boys, one by lions, and last by kneeling figures; strap handle with grooved terminal, shallow pewter cover, hinged, with flattened ball thumbpiece.

"The creamy white tankard on the left of this image was made at Siegburg, near Bonn in the Rhineland, and has the moulded initials HH, for the potter Hans Hilgers. The tapering cylindrical body has three applied moulded panels featuring episodes from the life of the Old Testament hero Samson. In one, he kills a lion with his bare hands, in another he is seduced by Delila who took away his strength by cutting his hair, and in the third he carries off the gates of Gaza. The first two are based on woodcuts by Jost Amman, the third on an engraving by Virgil Solis. The tankard was formerly in the great collection of Renaissance works of art formed in Prague by Adalbert von Lanna (1836-1909) and later acquired by the diamond magnate Sir Julius Wernher (1850-1912). "