This is among the earliest English examples of a standing bowl of ‘tazza’ form, as distinct from the font-shaped cups of the early sixteenth century. A number of Elizabethan tazze survive, and similar vessels are known from Germany and Holland. Contemporary paintings show them being used as wine cups but they also probably served as spice plates.

The provenance of this piece is unknown, but the same maker’s mark is also found on a hexagonal salt in the College’s collection (Sioo5), and so both may well have been acquired at the time of their manufacture in the 1550s. The earliest certain reference to the tazza is in an inventory drawn up in 1647, where it is described as ‘i silver breade bole’, indicating that it was by then being used as a paten in Chapel. A number of other Elizabethan tazze were likewise donated to churches over the course of the seventeenth and eighteen centuries. It is reasonable to suppose, however, that the Winchester tazza was restored to secular uses when Warden Nicholas gave a pair of silver-gilt patens to College Chapel in 1683.

Literature: Percy MacQuoid, ‘The Plate of Winchester College’, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 2, no. 5 (July 1903), p. 156, plate IIIa; Charles Oman, ‘The Winchester College Plate’, The Connoisseur (January, 1962), pp. 27-9 (illustrated); J.K.D. Cooper, ‘An Assessment of Tudor Plate Design, 1530-1560’, The Burlington Magazine, 121 (1979), p. 364 (illustrated); Glanville, Silver in Tudor and Early Stuart England (London, 1990), p. 243; R. Foster, Winchester College Treasury: a guide to the collections (Winchester, 2016), p. 21 (illustrated)

Provenance: unknown, at Winchester College by 1647

Locations: Treasury, Gallery 1