Skobkar'
(vessel for brewing beer)

Late 17th century

Russia

This large wooden skobkar' hollowed out of the trunk of lime tree has the shape of a bowl with two projecting handles. The skobkar' is a very old type of Russian vessel used for the brewing and storage of beer and other fermented drinks. In olden days, according to Dahl, the great 19th-century Russian lexicographer and scholar of national traditions, peasants had a custom of bringing "worldly" mead and beer to the church porch where they drank it with great decorum from the skobkar' using wooden dippers. Between times the vessel was kept in the church.