as liquor carriers and drinking
cups in olden time. In the Guildhall Museum are several different types
of bottles, black jacks, and silver-rimmed cups. Until comparatively
recent times many old inns were famous for their leather drinking cups,
but as the coaching days came to an end such vessels were gradually
dispersed. Now that motor-cars have popularized the road once more, and
old inns are again frequented, the collector seeks in vain for what were
once quite common. In another noted collection there is a drinking cup
or bottle moulded like a negro's head, and there are what are called
pilgrim bottles, some of which are of ornamental type. The so-called
pots have sometimes lids and loosely fitting covers; the black jacks,
however, are chiefly open, ill-shaped vessels. Some of the black jacks
were very large, one in the Taunton Museum measuring 19 in. in height.
It was originally used in the servants' hall at Montacute House, which
is one of the finest old buildings in Somerset. This famous jack was in
olden time filled with beer every morning and placed on the servants'
breakfast table. Those smaller cups with silver mounts and shields, on
which are often engraved crests or initials of their former owners, are
of the rarer type, but they are not infrequently found among the relics
of an old family. There is a fine collection in the Hull Museum, and in
other places where they are found in excellent condition, proving the
truth of the rhyme published in _Westminster Drollery_ in the
seventeenth century in praise of the black jack, which runs as
follows:--

"No tankard, flagon, bottle, or jug
Are half so good, or so well can hold tug;
For when they are broken or full of cracks,
Then must they fly to the brave black jacks."

Leather Curios.

Some very fine pieces of leather work have been modelled as curios and
ornaments. Some of the most notable are models of old warships and fully
rigged galleons made of leather. Leather pictures were made some years
ago; a little later leather modelling of baskets of flowers, and the
making of picture frames of leather was a popular amusement, some of the
ornamental brackets made of leather being specially effective. The
surrounds of picture frames made of leather cut to shape, carved and
modelled, had a very similar effect to the beautiful carved wood work of
an earlier period. Some of the powder flasks of leather which were used
a century or two ago are valu