Mazer (drinking vessel)
A mazer is a medieval wooden drinking vessel: a wide, shallow bowl without a handle, standing on a flat foot with a raised boss or “print” in the center of the inside. Mazers range from plain wooden pieces to works decorated with metal rims, often in silver or silver gilt, and are usually made from dense woods such as maple, beech, or walnut. They measure about 5 to 11 inches across and come from North European medieval traditions, dating roughly from the 11th to the 16th centuries.
Many mazers feature metal bands, inscriptions, or engraved designs around the rim, and the boss is often decorated with religious or heraldic imagery. Some have wooden covers or metal handles. Notable examples include the Bute Mazer, which has a three‑dimensional reclining lion and enamelled coats of arms, and the Swan Mazer at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, with a swan on a slender column. The Pepys mazer in the British Museum is famous for its rim hallmarked 1507/8. Wreck finds from the Mary Rose show groups of mazers, while the Nanteos Cup is a single famous survival. The Watson Mazer, dating to the early 16th century, is the earliest Scottish standing mazer, a maple bowl with a silver‑gilt band, a silver stem, and an inscribed foot; it is now in the National Museum of Scotland.
Maz ers were often used at table, passed around for toasts, or kept as personal vessels in households, monasteries, churches, and colleges. Many were named in inventories; for example, a Durham monastery records a large “Grace cup” used after Grace, and a “Judas cup” used on Maundy Thursday. The word mazer comes from Middle English and Anglo‑Norman, with roots in Germanic languages, and historically referred both to the vessel and the wood itself. In later times some mazers were made with stems or resembled tazzas, and modern woodturners and silversmiths, such as Omar Ramsden, have continued making them.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 22:50 (CET).