Click for full size

The Mummers’ Play

Introduction
Found in other parts of the world, Mummers’ Plays are one of the oldest surviving features of an English Christmas and were possibly pagan rituals relating to good and evil. Mum means silent and shows were once mimed. Rhymes and dances came later, with local and seasonal variants plus modern plays. Iona cut out all original figures at the greenware stage on each piece, adding new ones from her own hand-pressed moulds.

Mummers originally visited big houses in hope of money or food, but usually collect for charity now. They often perform in halls or inns, as shown on the ceramic. This brightly-clad troupe in Exeter offer street theatre. 

click for full size

Hazle Ceramics
Mummers’ Play
Limited Mould of 20
on London Tavern
with Knight Add-ons

 Illustration for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a 1375 Northern poem. Even folklore genius Tolkien found the Green Knight’s role hard to interpret!

20th Anniversary
By Iona Driver

UK/Europe £84.50
Rest of World £73.48

Click to add to basket

From left: Mummers St George and the Green Man, an antecedent of the Green Knight, who jousts below. 

The Green Knight
The main act is a wooden sword duel with Hero St George or Santa Claus versus a Fool or Foe. One is cut down with the quack Doctor restoring him to life with a drug. Iona depicts St George and the Green Knight, aka punk Slasher in her 1980 school play. The above poem’s Knight challenges King Arthur’s Round Table to trade blows. Sir Gawain cuts off his head. The Green Knight picks it up, asking to meet a year on! He is in fact Lord Bertilak, who nicks Gawain’s neck but only because he wasn’t quite honest!

A mounted Metropolitan Police Service officer outside Buckingham Palace, London in 2005. 