A beautiful leather “black jack” in the form of a jug with an applied silver rim with hallmarks for Sheffield, England, 1913. Dating to just before the Great War, this black jack was realised by Frederick James Ross, a well known maker for tableware.

In England from quite early times leather vessels were used very generally. The black jack was a kind of leather pitcher or jug always lined with pitch on metal, of massive and sturdy build, corpulent and capacious. It quite dwarfed all rival pots, mugs, or pitchers of leather.

In the fifteenth century they were called ”jacks”. New College, Oxford, in 1414 purchased “four leather jacks two holding a gallon each and two a pottle each, the four costing four shillings and eightpence.” The vessels were not known as black jacks until the sixteenth century, being occasionally described before then as a ”Jacke of leather to drinke in”. The word jack was used for various articles; there were ” kitchen jacks” to turn the roasting spits, and leather coats were ” jacks of defence.” This defensive coat was known in England for several centuries as “the jack,” and when adopted by the French archers was called ” jaque d’Anglois ” ; the prefix ”black” was no doubt added to the drinking jack to distinguish it from this leather jerkin, which would generally be made of buff leather and as a rule of lighter colour. The vessels were not known as “black jacks” jacks until the sixteenth century, the full title was used in 1567 when Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, purchased a black jack for one shilling.

Though the black jack was often of considerable size, there were pots of leather still larger, called bombards, the lightness of the material in proportion to its strength was such that they could be made bigger than drinking vessels of any other kind, with-out becoming too unwieldy; the great weight of earthen or metal pitchers of large size made them inconvenient even when empty.Very fine specimens of leather bottells, bombards and black jacks can be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington.

Condition: excellent

Dimensions: Xcm high, Xcm deep, Xcm wide