Huge Rare antique guild jug pottery from Austria-Hungary, blue wine pitcher from 1887

Huge guild jug.

Height: 42,5 cm (16,7")

Weight: 4,5 kg

It is in great condition!

Will be packed in double boxes.

Can be combined shipping with AntiquetalentArt!

In feudal Europe, the interests of urban craftsmen were protected by professional groups known as guilds. Operating under similar structures and according to similar rules across the continent, guilds ordered and defined every aspect of members’ private and professional lives and offered representation in the face of municipal and aristocratic authorities. While responsible for providing certain community services (such as fire-fighting and public safety), they also had significant control over the family lives, religious beliefs, and moral behaviour of members. In many places, guilds were divided into two separate parts, a main organisation operated by the master craftsmen, and a lesser, mirror-image society operated by the group’s journeymen.
Guilds also served as the setting for members’ social lives: each gathering, whether for the purpose of electing officials, inducting new members, or even lesser activities such, as singing concluded with large – in some cases enormous – bouts of merrymaking. Surviving sources on guild regulations reveal that these included not only drinks, but also meals of multiple courses. It was in this setting that special vessels such as this jug were used.
The similarities between European guilds extended not only to matters of structure and operation, but also to the objects they possessed. Larger guild artefacts were engraved with the names of the organisation’s officers; smaller, personal ones with the signature of the object’s owner. Most also sported a date and guild emblem, usually a composite image of the tools of the trade in question. Guild artefacts differed with regard to use of decorative techniques and stylistic marks, with folk art or regional motifs found only on later pieces.

The vessels and dishes used by Western European guilds – bowls, tankards, goblets, and plates – were generally made of pewter. The vast majority of surviving specimens were used to hold liquids. In general, the smaller cups, chalices, goblets, and flagons are presumed to have been produced as personal drinking vessels. None are made of ceramic, the preferred materials having been faïence (of which only a few examples have survived), pewter, or even – as in the case of metalworking/jewellers’ guilds – precious metals.
The above analysis notwithstanding, in Hungary, with only a few exceptions, the large jugs used to hold and transport drinks were made of ceramic and exhibited a form and style that remained virtually unchanged from the late 17th until the early 20th century. Though Hungarian guilds were dissolved in 1872, their customs were carried on by the trade associations that replaced them, which continued to commission the production of guild-type jugs throughout the mid-to-late 19th century.