Hot-drinking practices in the late Renaissance Italian household

This chapter addresses the relationship and the potential disjuncture between texts, images and objects in the exploration of preventive health practices in the late Renaissance Italian household, focusing on an atypical vessel for the table to open wider questions about the material culture of hot drinking. It explores the 'teapotishness' of what might be named, inaccurately but evocatively, a Renaissance 'proto-teapot'. The chapter focuses on an enigmatic sixteenth-century earthenware pouring vessel for the table and propose that this object might have been involved in hot-drinking rituals. It examines what one might gain from using an object-driven approach in the process of exploring early modern healthy living practices concerned with hot drinking. The chapter focuses on how, through close object analysis, we are able to locate it within a wider family of table vessels displaying overt performative properties.