This week's MYSTERY OBJECT. Although there's very little mystery about it. I'm sure that any real ceramicist would tell you that it has almost NO monetary value, because of the damage. Perhaps Z and Russell would confirm (or deny ?) that last sentence ? However, in my view, it has great value from the social history point of view. Perhaps my readers could tell me what it is, when it was made and where, what has happened to it, what has been done to it, and by whom (I don't mean their name, of course, just their occupation- two possibles here).
7 comments:
Doulton (or similar - I can't read the marks on the base)stoneware harvest jug of the Victorian period which has met with some rough 'chiner from over the wash and lost its handle. A passing tinker or resident blacksmith has wrought a fine prosthetic cage and handle to enable it to resume its duties.
Its socio-historic value lies in the demonstration of thrift and craft, ingenuity and skills to be found in late C.19th rural peasant life.
Is this a Doulton salt glazed stoneware jug which has broken and been repaired by a blacksmith? Made in Stoke on Trent around 1780 and repaired by Arthur Higgins in 1847.
Is it for alcohol, possibly for the hunt for topping up stirrup cups?
hope you are both well, with love from a wet and windy North Cornwall x
Well, I think you got the lot between you. It's a pottery jug by Doulton of Lambeth, made some time in the first half of the nineteenth century, I think. It's of lovely quality, but has had the handle knocked off (also sometime in the nineteenth century) but instead of throwing it away the owner has had the local blacksmith, or possibly an itinerant tinker - and here Roger's knowledge of tinkers comes in useful - presumably Mr. Higgins. The repairer made a good handle of tinned sheet iron, mounted on two iron bands encircling the jug top and bottome, these being joined by four vertical tinned iron straps. The lot was then lead soldered tightly together onto the jug. How this was done using even lead solder heat and without damaging further the jug (which would have been worth about sixpence in the first place) only a nineteenth century tinker would know. However I've been lost in admiration of his craft for some years now. And - Yes - Maggie, it's the sort of thing that was probably used for topping up stirrup cups (these days usually with sloe gin in this area. I think all of you get at least ten out of ten for that one.
Could it be a winsome jugette clamped in a chastity belt because her husband is away on the King's business?
Don't think they were used much in the nineteenth century - if indeed ever.
That would explain the huge population of crockery almost as reliably as the industrial revolution!
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