vat included € 370The Whiskered Sweetheart

Let’s dwell on the Sweetheart a moment. It is our favourite.
This precious artisanal object is produced in the historical workshops of Grottaglie’s ceramic quarter.
It is said that in the 17th century a winemaker from Martina Franca married a beautiful girl from Grottaglie. The girl, being from Grottaglie, had to, according to an ancient medieval practice which was still in practice, the “ius primae noctis”, pass the first night of marriage with the feudal lord and obviously this did not please the winemaker, who refused to accept it. So he decided to dress as a woman and sacrifice himself to please the prince. And so he did. He dressed as a woman, with sumptuous clothes and went to the castle, forgetting however to cut his moustache.
When he arrived in the presence of the prince the deception was obvious, so, at the beginning, the prince ordered him to be sentenced to death, but then after a good laugh, knowing that the deceiver had a prized vineyard, he ordered him to bring to court all the wine he had obtained from his lands in amphorae depicting him as a transvestite, otherwise he would die. The winemaker went to all the workshops in the neighbourhood to have them make the amphorae inspired by him. The potters produced about seven hundred of these anthromorphic amphorae to allow the winemaker to transfer his good wine and to save his life and the virginity of his beloved. And so the characteristic artifact was born from a badly carried out stratagem and a death threat from a medieval feudal lord.

Hand modelled majolica
Height 50 cm
Weight kg 4.6
DELIVERY TIME 40 working days