The Automaton that is also a Drinking Game | with Rachel King | Curator's Corner S7 Ep9

Today we're going to talk about this object. It stands about 30 centimetres high and it weighs an incredible 1.5 kilos. It's made of silver and it was made about 400 years ago in the southern German town of Nuremberg. The surprise feature of this object is that it's hollow. It's a bottle and his head is the stopper. And today we're going to talk about drinking culture 400 years ago and the drinking games that led Martin Luther to describe Germany as plagued with the sin of boozing. I'm Rachel King. I'm curator of Renaissance Europe and the Waddesdon Bequest here at the British Museum. Welcome to my corner. So let's look at the object in a little more detail. His head pops off and the body is in fact a bottle. Now that's not all there is to this. There's a further secret and this tussock here down at the bottom is concealing a clockwork. So in so many words what you see is a bottle on a clockwork masquerading as a huntsman. That's not something you get to see every day but given I'm curator of the Waddesdon Bequest here at the British Museum it's something I get to see and say much more often than many of my other colleagues. I said it was silver but it looks gold. That's because it is silver but silver coated in a thin layer of gold. Around the time that this was made silver was much more easily obtainable than gold and it could be given a luxurious finish made to look like gold by coating it. Silver was therefore also cheaper and because it was less dense than gold objects made of it are less heavy and it's much less soft so it could be worked differently. The bottom of the object that you see here still retains the original colour of the silver and there's lots of special details. This uses a technique called life casting and that's something I discuss in my previous curator's corner that you can find on the channel here. So there are many more skills and evidence on this object than just gilding and let me pop his head back on because it's a little bit sad having him lying decapitated down there. The craftsperson who has made this has mastered engraving. That's cutting little designs into the silver with a very sharp tool. They've mastered raising. That's stretching and bending the material to give it a three-dimensional surface. They've mastered chasing. That's using lots of little punches and tools to create texture to the surface and that's really beautifully shown particularly on the boots and on this fur of this wonderful hunting dog. They've mastered casting. There's drawn wire in evidence here on the chain used to hold the dog. There's folded metal. All in all, it's an object which evidences great skill and it's an object which also shows collaboration because it's probable that somebody else made the clockwork underneath. But what's particularly important and impressive about this object is the vision that the maker had. It's not a sculpture. It's not made to stand still and be ornamental. The clockwork is there to carry it across the table, to make it dynamic and to bring it into interaction with others whether that's in using it as a bottle or in having it as a sort of toy. You're probably wondering what I mean when I say the word toy. In the 1500s and in the 1600s at courtly tables and in the tables of well-to-do households drinking was a very important part of sociability. In other words, being together. There were lots of different types of drinking vessels in lots of different types of materials. But particularly from the 16th century onwards novelty drinking vessels proliferate. And this is a novelty drinking vessel and that's why I called it a toy. And what happened with a vessel like this is that it was a drinking randomiser. Just imagine you're sitting at a table. Somebody's wound this chap up and off he goes. We don't know, since he doesn't work anymore whether he would have blighted or clattered across the table. But whatever is the case at some point he would have come to a stop and his spear would have been pointing at you. Or you. And it would be incumbent on you to drink him empty. There was great shame involved for men who couldn't hold their drink in this period. However, objects like this were also highly criticised by members of the clergy. And vessels like this were thought to encourage binge drinking. We know from some of their polemics that there were vessels of many types. Many more than survive today. And I'm going to quote one. He said that there were vessels like ships, like windmills, like lanterns, bagpipes, writing accessories, guns, horns, spears and wine carts. And the list goes on. There were bunches of grapes, vessels in the shapes of apples and pears, vessels in the shapes of chickens, monkeys, clerics, nuns, farmers, monks, bears, lions, deer, horses, ostriches, owls, swine and elk's feet. And you'll see he forgot huntsmen. So who would have owned an object like this huntsman? Well, we don't actually know its provenance. That means we don't know to whom this object actually belonged. But we can make some guesses about the sort of context in which it could be found. Because many of the vessels take on shapes that directly relate to where they're used. So, for example, animals found in the forest were probably used in hunting lodges. And it seems reasonable to guess that a huntsman figure, used as a drinking vessel, might have been used in a hunting lodge. If you were living in the city or in a town like Nuremberg and you were invited to go to somebody's hunting lodge, they would have greeted you at the front door with a drink and a welcoming visitor's book. You would have been expected to drink the drink in entirety, in one go, and then to leave a message in the visitor's book. And then presumably, after a lovely day doing whatever you want to do in the countryside, there would have been a magnificent feast. Again, probably with food related to the forest. That would be things which would have been caught, such as wild boar. And this huntsman in particular has a boar spear. You might have enjoyed, if you were near to Nuremberg, a dish such as Lebkuchen, which are honey cakes, because the forests around there had lots of wild bee hives. Now, this is not a drinking vessel in the sense that one can drink from it. It's a drinking vessel in the sense that one pours from it. It's a bottle. We don't quite know what it would have contained, but when it came into the British Museum from Waddesdon Manor in 1898, it was said to smell of cherry brandy. So it seems that it was being used at least for that liquid in the 19th century. How would you pour from something like this? How do you pick it up? Well, I'm almost loathe to try. It's really, really difficult to know where you should get hold of them. So we've got another object from the collection to look at how you could drink and pour from these objects. I'm just going to slip him to the side now. Bye-bye. See you later. And bring this magnificent creature of the forest. Just like the huntsman, it's not a sculpture. It's another drinking vessel. So have you ever played a trick on somebody at table? Well, this is the way you did it in the 16th century with these novelty drinking vessels. And the stag is a really good example. How did you drink from something like this? There aren't any instruction manuals for the 16th and 17th century. We don't really know the answer. But colleagues in the museums in Kassel in Germany have conducted experiments with the objects that they have in their collections. And they've asked themselves, how much liquid does an object like this hold? How does it pour? And how do you drink from them? And they've come up with some suggestions. So the first thing is that the stag's head comes off. And it can be turned upside down like this to make a little schnapps cup. The body of the stag is essentially the carafe, the bottle. It's what holds the liquid. How do you pour from it? Well, it seems most obvious, I suppose, to lift it up and pour like this. But as you can see, the stag's leg gets in the way. It gets caught before you can really tip it properly. In fact, the team in Kassel discovered that you have to pour in this orientation. And the most important thing about this is that in pouring in this orientation, you can control the flow of the liquid up the stag's spine. Not only is the hoof a problem if you pour in this orientation, but also the belly onto which I'm holding. Because the belly causes the liquid to pull, and therefore when you get it to the right moment, the right angle, it all springs out in a great big gloop. The point is, essentially, that the person who didn't know that that would happen would be humiliated at table. And the person who did would simply turn the object around and do it flawlessly with no problem at all. You would have had to have seen them being used before, or perhaps to have owned one already at home, in which case you would have known that the person who'd invited you to dinner was going to catch you out, and that you were going to be the butt of their joke. So, now you know how to do it, be aware, should anybody ever invite you to dinner and offer you a drink from their stag drinking cup, turn it around and drink from the spine. Now, if drinking vessels, drinking tricks, anything to do with booze interests you, take a look on the British Museum's YouTube channel, and there are plenty of other curator corners and plenty of other contributions dealing with exactly this theme.