The wooden bowl, as we see in the mazer, became enriched with costly mounts. These additions rarely added to the utility of the vessel, but they denote its elevation into usage by more wealthy people. The plain grey or mottled and excellently potted stoneware jug, the like of which Mistress Quickly must have used to pour out the canary of Falstaff and Bardolf and the thirsty set of tapsters who surrounded the fat knight, was common enough in the early sixteenth century. But in Elizabeth’s day it added luxurious appendages to itself in the shape of silver or silver-gilt rim and lid and bands and foot. [Illustration: MAZER, OF MAPLE WOOD. Mounted in silver-gilt, ornamented with quatrefoil belts. Inscription on boss, “A Gift to the Parish of St. Petrock, 1490.”] [Illustration: INTERIOR OF MAZER, SHOWING INSCRIPTION. (_In possession of Parish of St. Petrock, Exeter._)] The mazer, a wooden vessel in form like the more modern punch-bowl, mounted in silver, is the earliest type of our domestic plate. These bowls were ornamented with silver bands and silver rims, and in some cases there was a silver circular plate or boss in the centre of the vessel inside. The example we illustrate is mounted in silver-gilt with quatrefoil belts. It has an inscription on the boss, “A Gift to the Parish of St. Petrock, 1490.” The wood of these mazers was usually maple, and the name is supposed to be derived from the British word _masarm_ (maple). The Dutch word _maeser_ means a knot of maple wood. Spenser in the sixteenth century has the lines: Then, lo! Perigot, the pledge which I plight, A _mazer_ ywrought of the maple ware, Wherein is enchased many a fair fight Of bears and tigers that make fierce war. Among the earliest of drinking vessels of the Middle Ages this form of the broad bowl followed the earlier horn drinking cup. Mazers were not made after the sixteenth century. The form was not confined to England, for Sir Walter Scott, in his “Lord of the Isles,” has the couplet: Bring hither, he said, the mazers four My noble fathers loved of yore. In regard to some of the prices paid for mazers at auction in London, the following may convey an idea as to rarity. In 1903 a fifteenth-century mazer realized £140. In 1902 a sixteenth-century example brought £170. In 1905 a mazer dated 1527 sold for £500, but in 1908 one dated 1534 fetched the colossal price of £2,300. Certainly this is the highest price paid for maplewood. If the bowl had been all silver, and had been sold by the ounce, the sum paid would have been remarkable. But collectors are no respecters of persons, and as a rarity a mazer makes an appeal which it cannot do as a work of art.