{"id":3557,"date":"2009-06-09T07:51:36","date_gmt":"2009-06-09T11:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/?p=3557"},"modified":"2009-06-05T15:02:07","modified_gmt":"2009-06-05T19:02:07","slug":"witch-bottles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/?p=3557","title":{"rendered":"Witch Bottles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/witchbottle-94x150.jpg\" alt=\"Witch Bottle\" title=\"Witch Bottle\" width=\"94\" height=\"150\" class=\"contentimg\" \/>There&#8217;s been a recent stir in the news about a 17th-Century &#8220;witch bottle&#8221; unearthed in England (read about the find at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/news\/uk\/science\/article6426318.ece\">Times Online<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/31107319\/\">MSNBC<\/a>); although over 200 have been found, this is the first one that&#8217;s intact.<\/p>\n<p>The discovery is interesting, but I&#8217;m also much taken with the bottle itself.  It&#8217;s described as &#8220;salt-glazed stoneware,&#8221; and I love the imposing bearded face on the neck.  A bit of online digging led me to the fact that many witch bottles were made of salt-glazed stoneware flagons known as &#8220;bellarmines&#8221; after the feared inquisitor Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino, whose face was traditionally embossed on the neck.  (So that&#8217;s not some ancient pagan god on the bottle, it&#8217;s a really uptight Catholic.)<\/p>\n<p>Original bellarmines are reasonably easy to find, but expensive (I found a couple on eBay for around $600).  Fortunately they apparently lend themselves to lots of reproductions: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moonstonepottery.com\/products.html\">Moonstone Pottery<\/a> has them, as does <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hudsonclaypotter.co.uk\/the_pots.php?type=3\">Hudson Claypotter<\/a>.  There&#8217;s also a lovely one at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.colonyofavalon.ca\/giftshop\/reproductions.html\">Colony of Avalon<\/a>, but it&#8217;s a bit pricier than the others.<\/p>\n<p>A bottle like this would make a lovely display piece, especially considering the history of what they were used for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s been a recent stir in the news about a 17th-Century &#8220;witch bottle&#8221; unearthed in England (read about the find at Times Online and MSNBC); although over 200 have been found, this is the first one that&#8217;s intact. The discovery is interesting, but I&#8217;m also much taken with the bottle itself. It&#8217;s described as &#8220;salt-glazed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bad-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3557"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3623,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3557\/revisions\/3623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}