Lavabo kettle
As Lavabokessel is called the bulbous, tiltable hanging on a hanger pouring vessels with two pouring spouts that poured in the Middle Ages and the early modern period of bronze or brass, and for hand washing were used. The contemporary names are hand barrel or pouring barrel .
use
In combination with a bowl placed underneath, typically a basin bat bowl, or a drain basin walled into the wall niche, the ensemble belonged to the furnishing of sacristies, council chambers, offices, but also bourgeois living rooms and kitchens. Early image sources show around 1400 wooden frames on which kettles and basins were mounted. In later depictions, too, a towel can often be seen on a special holder nearby.
What the medieval lavabo kettles have in common is a more or less raised, collar-like rim, the design of the bracket hinges in the shape of human, mostly female heads and the shape of the animal head of the two spouts.
In terms of material, numerous specimens have survived, especially in northern Central Europe (the Netherlands, northern Germany, Scandinavia), and the pictorial sources are also concentrated in the north. The type of history Lavabokessels is in body work bronze vessels of the Middle Ages have been investigated in detail. However, only partial conclusions can be drawn from this about the geographical origin and chronological development of certain individual pieces. An emergence of the type around 1400 is likely, an end of production or use can be determined far less precisely, since formally coarser forms seem to exist up to the 18th century. Only the very flat kettle shapes are assigned to French manufacturers of the 19th century. That does not rule out that older types have been and are being imitated and forged since that time.
literature
- Anna Elisabeth Theuerkauff-Liederwald: Medieval bronze and brass vessels. Buckets - jugs - lavabo kettle . (Bronze devices of the Middle Ages, Volume 4). Berlin 1988. ISBN 3-87157 099-0