Tudor Carpet Watering Pot
Imagine your home without carpet on the floor or glass in the windows.
This is what life was like in the average Tudor home. A hard mud floor was covered with long grasses called rushes. Draughts from the open windows would blow dirt into the house, whirling it around furniture, people and food. Soot from candles, dust from mud, straw and animal hide, smoke and ash from an open fire, all added to the dirt and made the Tudor home very difficult to keep clean. And when it came to housework, in an age long before electrical appliances, there was no vacuum cleaner to switch into action and suck up the dirt. It all had to be removed by hand.
Dampening dust with water doesn't remove it, but at least it keeps it all in one place. The Tudors solved the problem of dust management by gently sprinkling their floors with water, keeping dust out of the air by making it damp enough to stick among the reed floor coverings.
This bell-shaped watering pot is made out of hand thrown clay, glazed, and simply decorated with hoops. The unglazed bottom of the pot is pierced with over fifty holes. The top has a neck narrow enough to be held between two upturned fingers, allowing the thumb to rest over the single hole on the top of the pot.
To fill the pot you fully submerge it in water, keeping your thumb over the top hole to create a vacuum to keep the water in. You lift your thumb off the hole to sprinkle the water through the holes at the bottom. The pot had to be light enough to be carried by one hand, even when full of water.
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Dimensions: Height:11cm Diameter:10cm |
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