Pilgrim Bottle

pilgrim bottle, vessel with a body varying from an almost full circle, flattened, to a pear shape with a shortish neck, a spreading foot, and, generally, two loops on the shoulders. Through the loops either a chain or a cord was passed for carrying the bottle or for maintaining the stopper in place.

Pilgrim bottles date to ancient Roman times in the West and to 7th-century China in the East. They were made in a wide range of materials, including earthenware, porcelain, silver, and glass, and also in more perishable materials such as leather. Originally these vessels may have been carried by travelers on their journeys, but the ones that have survived are so sumptuous that their function was probably purely ornamental. If they were used, it must have been, as in the case of some of the traveling tea or coffee sets of Meissen porcelain, exclusively by the very wealthy. Pottery pilgrim bottles are found in China from the Tang dynasty (618–907), possibly imitations of even earlier metal prototypes dating as far back as the Zhou dynasty (1111–255 bce). In 16th-century Europe, metal pilgrim bottles—generally of silver or silver gilt and probably of Chinese inspiration—were made mainly in Augsburg, Ger.; they were also made in coloured glass (generally green) with ormolu, or gilded brass, mounts. Along with the Chinese blue-and-white Ming (1368–1644) pilgrim bottles, the most famous are the pear-shaped stoneware bottles made at Meissen by Johann Friedrich Böttger.