Bronze Age Gold from Wales

Dish, pale buff earthenware, circular, broad flat foot ring, gently curved sides with turned down rim; covered all over with a bluish-white tin-glaze, the inside painted in blue, yellow and brown with a design two men wearing coats, hats and swords, carrying gloves and with their left and right hand respectively held up and where they meet in the middle supporting unclothed infant conjoined twins, three clumps of trees in the background, inscriptions round the rim, at the bottom and next to the twins. Three unglazed stilt marks on the inside. The dish formerly rivetted, rivets now removed.

This dish was made at Brislington and commemorates the kidnapping of conjoined twins, Pricilla and Aquila, born in May 1680 at Ile Brewers, Somerset. Shortly after their birth, the twins were taken from their parents by two local squires, Sir Edmund Phelips of Montacute and Captain Henry Walrond, who sought to profit from exhibiting the twins. The two men were apparently prosecuted, but to no effect.