Bottle (Schraubflasche) (c. 1660–80): Art, History and Details

Bottle (Schraubflasche) (c. 1660–80) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Bottles or jars (kruken) of this type of six-sided form are most often associated with the ceramic tradition found in Kreussen (now Creussen) in the Bavarian region of Germany during the mid to late 1600s. With a threaded neck fitted with a pewter screw top and ring, they were ideal vessels for medicinal liquids as they could be easily connected to a belt for transport to the patient. Applied decoration depicting the twelve apostles, as on this example, allude to the spiritual nature of healing.

Object facts

• Title: Bottle (Schraubflasche)
• Date: c. 1660–80
• Culture: German, Bavaria, Kreussen
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: salt-glazed stoneware, applied and impressed decoration, pewter
• Dimensions: Overall: 34.3 cm (13 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1918.327

A detail from the museum

The applied decoration on this bottle depicts the twelve apostles.

Collection credit

Gift of Charles G. King Jr.

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Accessions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 5, no. 8/9 (1918): 82-85.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.