Tankard with lid

The slim, cylindrical tankard with a lid, made at the end of the 19th century in the manufacture in Nieborów, was decorated with figural motifs. A dynamic figure of a nobleman in a kontusz outfit dominates the decoration. On the bottom of the vessel two signatures have been preserved. The first one is a binded monogram MPR, placed under the graphically presented ducal mitre. It allows one to establish the time of the item's manufacture as the last quarter of the 19th century and leaves no doubt that it is a product of the Nieborów workshop, which belonged to Michał Piotr Radziwiłł. The second signature - F. S. - is the monogram of Feliks Szewczyk, a decorator and painter who worked in Nieborów between 1883 and 1885. Szewczyk was also a watercolour painter, noted among the students of Gerson's Drawing Class, who willingly cooperated with the Nieborów maiolica manufacture. His compositions are characterised by dynamism, as exemplified by the decoration of the Lublin tankard.

At the lower edge of the vessel we can see an inscription: BONUM VINUM LAETIFICAT COR (Good wine cheers the heart). The depiction of a nobleman leaning out of a goblet, accentuated by the above sentence, draws attention to colourful times and Sarmatian customs. Such motifs in Nieborów ceramics responded to the postulates of contemporaries looking for native features. It was considered a patriotic duty to create a new language of forms based on national tradition, both in the case of works of art and utilitarian objects.

Magdalena Norkowska