These fierce-faced stoneware bottles are Bartmänner, German for “bearded men” or Bellarmines, named after Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, a staunch anti-Protestant unpopular in Northern Germany and the Low Countries.
Developed in 14th-century Rhineland, stoneware was fired at a blazing 1250–1300°C, turning local clay into tough, watertight pottery. Salt flung into the kiln vaporised, leaving its signature orange-peel sheen.
Tough and versatile, the vessels swept across Europe, carrying beer, cider and rum, mineral water and even acids. Soon common in British homes, taverns and markets, imports proved so lucrative that politics, not skill, kept English potters from competing.
That changed in the early 1670s, when William Killigrew and John Dwight raced to make English stoneware. Dwight succeeded in lodging his patent 13 days before Killigrew, and went on to establish the first stoneware factory, breaking the trade monopoly and marking the beginning of a new era in the British ceramic industry.
