The fuddling cup consists of three small cups with interlinked handles. It is made of pale unglazed clay. You can see the horizontal bands on each cup where they have been turned on a wheel before being joined together. These cups have faces of three men, with eyes and beards and rows of dots to mark out eyebrows and moustache.

Can you find any other face pots on objectlessons?

The fuddling cup is not just decorative as the interlinked cup system worked as a mixing vessel. You can’t see from the image but inside the cups a hole has been pierced that links each to the adjacent one.  Different liquids could be put in two of the sections and the combined brew drunk from the third. Perhaps a herbal blend in one or part and water in the other to make a tissane? In the past milk and brandy would be combined for medicinal purposes, but milk curdles in alcohol.  By using the fuddling cups you could put milk in one section and brandy in the other and drink a cocktail from the third cup. The fuddling cup was sometimes known as called a puzzle cup because of the ‘puzzle’ to drink from one cup without spilling the contents of the other chambers. And fuddling means to confuse and, sometimes, to intoxicate. We still use the word ‘befuddle’.

The clay surface of this replica is quite rough– it doesn’t feel that nice to drink from. In the West Country in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, these vessels were made in tin-glazed earthenware.