Featured 1870s Sterling Silver Barrel-form Pounce Pot!

I have been chasing after one of these things possibly longer than anything else that I have in my collection.

It's sterling silver, just over two inches tall, and it's adorable!!

 

What is a pounce pot?

 

A holder for "pounce" = the "sand" for setting ink.

 

ah ha!

 

A pounce pot is a desk-accessory. You keep it on your desk along with your inkwell, candlesticks, pen-trays, pen-cleaners yadda yadda yadda.

It's filled with "pounce", which is any kind of fine, dry, absorbent powder, or dust.

Traditionally it was crushed bones, crushed shellfish-shells, etc.

I just filled mine up with sand. It does exactly the same thing.

It's what people used to dry the ink on their papers before blotting paper came along.

You write whatever - signature, letter, so on...and then you pour the pounce onto the paper. The pounce soaks up the excess ink, and stops it from running, staining, bleeding, feathering, etc. Then you pick up the paper and either blow the sand off, shake it off...or if you want to be neater - you pour the sand back into the pounce pot.

Most pounce pots are specifically shaped (like mine is) so that you can just pour the sand back inside the pot, without having to open the lid. That way you can recycle the same sand over and over and over again almost endlessly.

It also keeps sand off the floor.

They really died out in the Victorian era, when blotting paper replaced pounce as the ink-drying method of choice. This one is from 1874, I think, which seems very LATE for a pounce pot.

 

How neat, I just learned something new here yet again.

 

I just suffer a permanent low grade envy of you now Shangas ! Always learning on here .

 

TOOK the word right out of my mouth!!!!!

 

AND it's LOVELY, @Shangas

 

I'll have to be careful about what else I share on here from now on, I guess, eh?

 

Do you guys have any kind of wavier that I can pre-emptively sign to protect against future strokes brought on by antique-induced envy?

 

You're welcome, Bookie.

I'm surprised nobody here has heard of them before?? I mean I know they're obscure as hell, but I thought surely in a forum full of antiques collectors and dealers...??

 

It's a really sweet piece, and would certainly serve well as a pounce pot or sander, but believe it's more likely a shaker - the well on pounce pots and sanders are usually more typically concave, or less often, with a flared rim, the curved slope helpful in directing the excess pounce or blotting sand.


Here's a stand with very similar shakers by George Fox, London, 1864:

https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/d...lver-cruet-set-george-fox-1864/id-f_16150051/






And another, also by George Fox, London, 1877:

https://www.chiswickauctions.co.uk/...t-cruet-london-1877-by-george-fox/?lot=126880





~Cheryl

 

I never heard of it before so count me in as learning here always.

 

I knew what they were due to a Jane Austen obsession. Captain Wentworth uses one in a screen adaptation of Persuasion.

 

Now that I think about it, I think you're right. The date just didn't match up to what I thought. Never mind, one day I'll find a proper one and sell this!!

I dunno when that'll be, but...eh. Silver ones are SO hard to find.

 

You toss sand at those naughty Siamese cats when they start playing with the quill in your ink well.....lol.. Mine was "KAI-KAI ( but spelled Ki-Ki ) she was with me from my birth till I was 15 or so ..... quite the character she was !