Bishop of Carpentras, "in the shape of a flying dragon, with a
crowned damsel sitting upon a green terrace." Another, belonging
to the Countess of Cambridge, was described as being "in the shape
of a monster, with three buttresses and three bosses of mother of
pearl... and an ewer,... partly enamelled with divers babooneries"--a
delightful expression! Other hanaps were in the forms of swans, oak
trees, white harts, eagles, lions, and the like--probably often
of heraldic significance.

A set of platters was sent from Paris to Richard II., all of gold,
with balas rubies, pearls and sapphires set in them. It is related
of the ancient Frankish king, Chilperic, that he had made a dish of
solid gold, "ornamented all over with precious stones, and weighing
fifty pounds," while Lothaire owned an enormous silver basin bearing
as decoration "the world with the courses of the stars and the
planets."

The porringer was a very important article of table use, for pap,
and soft foods such as we should term cereals, and for boiled pudding.
These were all denominated porridge, and were eaten from these vessels.
Soup was doubtless served in them as well. They were numerous in
every household. In the Roll of Henry III. is an item, mentioning
that he had ordered twenty porringers to be made, "like the one
hundred porringers" which had already been ordered!

An interesting pattern of silver cups in Elizabethan times were
the "trussing cups," namely, two goblets of silver, squat in shape
and broad in bowl, which fitted together at the rim, so that one
was inverted as a sort of cover on top of the other when they were
not in use. Drinking cups were sometimes made out of cocoanuts,