Eenrum / Ainrom

Eyck (1846?) thought the font was made of "Andersnachschen steen", a type of porous lava stone, and suggested a date in the 11th, or even as early as the 10th century. Ortt van Schonauwen (1858) reported this font, at his time, as being used for the storage of cement in a carpenter's workshop located to the north of the church, a font he suggested might be the oldest in the country; OvS (ibid.) reports considerable damage to the upper side of the round basin, and mentions Eyck's earlier identification of the stone [cf. supra], and concurs with his dating. There is a 1862-1864 engraving of this font by Jan Frederik Christiaan Reckleben. The font is noted with measurements and illustrated in Ligtenberg (1915), who reports it in the Groningen museum at the time and refers to Eyck's comments, as well as those of Peters (Zeitschr. f. christl. Kunst V (1892) Sp. 281-282), another earlier writer who suggested this font showed the stylistic influence of the original wooden vat fonts; Ligtenberg (ibid.), though not denying the existence of the earlier wooden vats used as fonts, questions that their regular use would have been widespread. Ligtenberg (ibid.) does however admit that there may be a faint similarity to the old wooden vat on the upper part of the basin, but the rest is far from the old model; he also comments that traces of paint found on the side must surely not be original, and mentions that the font was for a time put to non-liturgical uses in a carpentry shop at Eenrum; he mentions some comparable fonts at Kirchhilpe [i.e., Kirchilpe], Seligenthal, Schwarzrheindorf, St-Georg Kirche in Cologne. Not mentioned in Drake (2002). Steensma (2007) points to similarities between this font and the one at Vledder [cf. Index entry for Vledder]. In Kroesner & Steensma (2008). Noted in Limburg's Romanesque Baptismal Fonts in the Netherlands [www.romanicoportugal.info/zdutchfonts.htm] [accessed 9 January 2016]: "The font was kept in the church tower till 1841. The next 50 years it served as a lime mortar tub and then it went to the Groninger Museum. In 1966 it returned to the church." The material of the font has been described as basalt, granite, lava stone [cf. supra], etc. but Ligtenberg's identification of the stone as "tufsteen" [tufa] appears to be the most likely. The font is monolithic, with a double moulding at the upper rim, the most damaged area; the sides are decorated with a shallow arcade of blind round arches, on very wide flat columns; the shape is cylindrical rather than barrel-shaped. No cover present; some of the damage around the rim may be ralated to anchorings of an earlier cover.