Images(9)

Money Box

Date1692 (dated)

OriginEngland, London

MediumTin-glazed earthenware (delft)

DimensionsOH: 7 3/4"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1965-87

DescriptionTiered container composed of two globular sections, each with a slot for coins, on a high pedestal base. Smaller globe supported above the larger by a series of S-scrolls; additional scrolls support the teardrop finial. Bluish tin glaze decorated in blue and yellow with sprays of flowers; finial, dashes on scrolls, knop on base, and inscription "I M S 1692" in dark blue.
Label TextThe rarity of money boxes may be explained by the fact that it was necessary to break them to retrieve the coins. The only recorded similar example (the double globe form) was sold at auction in New York in 1979. Three eighteenth-century dated examples in delft are recorded--a dog form and two simpler globes. The scroll supports on this money box are not unlike those used as handles on late seventeenth-century drinking and serving vessels, for example, those on a small posset pot in the CWF collection (accession 1956-580).

The London attribution is based on the runny glaze under the foot.
Inscribed"I M S 1692"
MarkingsNone
ProvenanceA. S. Marsden Smedley;
F. H. Garner
Tilley & Co., London