LOT 0413

Very Large Glazed Bellarmine Witch's Bottle with Contents

LATE 16TH-EARLY 17TH CENTURY A.D.

10 3/8 in. (1.7 kg total, bottle: 26.5 cm).

Vessel of squat spherical form with a broad cylindrical neck, strap handle and foot with rolled rim, bearded face (Bartmann 'mask') and other detailing; with original contents comprising: eight iron clout nails with square-section shank and domed head; three similar with flat head; base metal dress pin with hollow-formed spherical head; similar with biconvex head; fragment of coarse-woven textile with five pins in situ; thirteen unassociated pins. [No Reserve]

From the private collection of a London, UK, gentleman.

Cf. example found on the Thames foreshore in 1926, published in Sparham, B. The Bottesford Witches: Bellarmine Witch Bottles; cf Merrifield, R. ‘The Use of Bellarmines as Witchbottles’ in Guildhall Miscellany, No 3. (Feb 1954.) pp 3-15.

Witch bottles were a response to the common belief in witchcraft, which was feared in the Puritan culture of those times. The process involved heating the victim’s urine in a bottle, mixed with human hair and metal nails and pins, sometimes inserted into a cloth panel representing the victim's heart. The bottle was then either buried under the hearth of a house (East Anglian tradition) or thrown into a river (London tradition). The heating of the bottle was supposed to transfer to the body of the witch who had caused the victim to be afflicted.