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The topic of handles is a large one and illustrates an important aspect of medieval jug production: the general appearance and construction of medieval handles is largely determined by potters' responses to technical problems.
Pulled handles
The most common handle on English medieval jugs is probably the 'pulled' handle. It is rapidly and easily made, and has the advantage of being stronger and less prone to failure than handles produced by other methods.
Pulling, in effect, is a form of throwing. The action of stroking the clay re-aligns its plate-like particles in the direction of pull, as in throwing the walls of a pot. This results in an overlapping configuration of platelets lying in the same plane, which allows the handle to be thinned without rupture.
Making pulled handles
In preparing the handle the clay should be thoroughly wedged and formed into a tapering cone, or small cylinder, to fit in the hand. Held in one hand with the arm raised to about eye level, the clay can be gently stroked downwards with the other, which must be well-wetted with slip.
The lengthening clay should be lightly gripped in the area of the hand between thumb and forefinger, as though gripping a broomstick. The handle is produced by repeated stroking until the right length and section is achieved. The position of the thumb and fingers determines the cross-section.
For rod handles the clay is extruded by forming a circle between thumb and fingers and stroking the clay down around its circumference. Rod handles often show lines of slip, wet clay and sometimes grit along their length from movements of the hand. An occasional lengthwise folding may come from inattentive pulling.
Strap handles can be made by thinning the clay between thumb and fingers to form an oval or flat section, and using the thumb to dress the handle with a recessed centre. Strap handles often have one side slightly thinner, or less rounded, than the other thicker side, as a consequence of stroking the clay in the aperture of the hand between thumb and forefinger. The depressed central channel usual in strap handles shows the imprint of the thumb as it is drawn down. There may be two or more channels or ridges disclosing the movement of thumb and fingers.
A handle may also be pulled from a rolled stump of clay firmly attached to the rim of a pot, by using much the same procedure (above) with the pot being held on its side. This method is suitable for small or rapidly made pieces where only a few strokes are needed to produce a handle.
When picking up a medieval jug and gripping its handle, it is common to find an almost exact congruence between the shape of the handle and the position of the thumb and fingers when the clay is pulled.
Rolled handles
Handles with a variety of cross-sections may also be made by rolling clay into handle-sized segments. Ar first sight the method seems simpler than pulling, but it is actually one in which good results are more difficult to achieve.
Well-wedged clay is formed into a sausage, or a thin slab, and rolled to the desired diameter on a flat surface or beaten with the hands. If the handle is not a plain rod a potter must lightly shape the roll of clay by hand, or stroke it into its characteristic forms with slip. Rolled handles, unlike pulled ones, are usually too limp to attach immediately. They can be handsome handles when the clay is given a deep central channel with the thumb, and the roll opens out forming a crescent of even thickness (left).
Undoubtedly a method of such obviousness was exploited by medieval potters, although indications of its use are difficult to find by external examination: the clay looses its identity as a roll once it is re-shaped by hand. It is possible that thin-section analyses to determine the orientation of inclusions could aid identification.
Pulled handles Vs rolled handles
When a clay roll is reworked to alter its profile or length, the line between rolled and pulled handles becomes blurred. The former are handles shaped by stroking a prepared length of clay, and in the latter case clay is extruded from a hand-sized lump. The basic difference between them lies in the structural superiority of the pulled handle, and the ease with which it is made. When freshly rolled clay is sharply curved the clay will buckle on the inside surface and tear or fractionally pull apart on the outer, necessitating hand smoothing of the piece. This defect is probably caused by the inability of the misaligned clay platelets to slide over one another when the handle is bent. In a pulled handle this weakness does not appear. The potter merely picks up a lump of wedged clay, dips his hand in slip and pulls it to fit the pot.
Thrown handles
In addition to the handles already described it is possible to make handles by cutting them from a thrown cylinder of clay on a moving wheel, most easily by using a needle. Unless the clay is fairly stiff, the handle pieces will be too soft to manipulate or apply without further drying.
Thrown or 'cut and folded' handles are found on much French pottery, especially 13th century Saintonge vessels. They usually have a rim-edge along one side of the characteristically thin strap. Experiments in duplicating these French handles suggest that the rim-edge is produced by the fingers on the wheel before cutting off. The result is an asymmetrical strap handle with one rounded edge, and one cut edge which may be rolled or rounded-off by folding it beneath the handle. A slight ridge of clay left by the cutting tool is sometimes visible on the finished handle(see left).
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