Given their relatively small metal content, many silver-mounted ‘tigerware’ beer jugs survived the great bullion melting of the English Civil War, making them perhaps the most recognised example of late 16th century silver today.
The fashion for adorning these Rhenish saltglazed vessels with silver mounts appears to have started at the court of Henry VIII. Cardinal Wolsey and his administrator, Thomas Cromwell, apparently both possessed such jugs in the 1520s.