Post #178578 by Rum Numb Davey on Wed, Aug 10, 2005 1:10 PM

The Toby jug is often seen as a uniquely British form of ceramics. Its history dates back at least as far as the 1770s, and it is possible to trace its ancestors even further to the creation of anthropomorphic jugs and bottles by the medieval potter. I consider the Toby Jugs to be the great-great-great Grandfather of the Tiki Mugs we are all so passionate about collecting, which originally were created by the Polynesian bar craze.

The Toby jug was first developed and popularized in England from around 1762 by the Staffordshire potter Ralph Wood. The jug depicts a seated man wearing an English ‘tricorn’ hat and holding a mug of beer and a glass or pipe. He was dressed in clothes of the time; a long coat with low pockets, waistcoat, cravat, knee breeches and buckled shoes. The original jug is supposed to have been inspired by a song of 1761 about one Toby Philpot. “Toby Philpot” was the clever nickname of a Yorkshire drunkard and glutton named Henry Elwes. This massive sumo of a man consumed 2,000 gallons of strong ale before he died in 1761. I have an engraving of him holding a gallon of ale in a giant ceramic mug of the brown salt glaze technique.

First other Staffordshire potteries, then workshops around England and eventually other countries copied the idea. Toby jugs are now highly collectible. They don’t sell many original Toby Jugs on eBay, they sell for thousands of dollars at the finest auction houses, and the Toby jug fancy of serious antique collectors humbles even the most ardent Tiki mug collectors. These people spend ridiculous sums of money for original Woods mugs, and other early ceramic masters.

Ceramics firm, Doulton in the 19th century, who developed the idea into a range of character jugs, revived Toby Jugs. Today, their popularity shows no signs of waning and they hold their price at auction sales. Their appeal is wide reaching because Doulton jugs are varied both in their craftsmanship and their subject matter. Doulton had made Toby jugs in the traditional manner since 1815 but in the 1920's Harry Simeon added color. This inspired Charles Noke, a Doulton artist and modeler to rethink the Toby jug tradition. He envisaged a more colorful and stylish jug based on the head and shoulders of a character rather than the full figure. He had in mind characters from English song, literature, history and legend, designed to appeal to future it took him almost ten years to be satisfied with the standards of design and production, but in 1934 the first character jug was launched. He chose as his subject John Barleycorn, a figure symbolizing whisky.

It became an instant success and the range was added to with Old Charley, the Night Watchman, Sairey Gamp, Parson Brown and Dick Turpin. Two years later the first character jug modeled on a real person was made with Herry Fenton's John Peel, a trend that has continued to the present day.

A feature of character jugs is their handle, which often shows an elaborate diversity of applied decoration. However, this is a feature, which has developed over the years. The first jugs generally had plain handles, with one or two exceptions, for some of the clown jugs had multi-colored handles, Dick Turpin had a gun for a handle and the Cellarer a bunch of keys. It was during the 1950s that the handles achieved greater creative significance when Max Henk was involved in their production. His Long John Silver had a parrot handle and for the sake authenticity does not have an eye patch, sticking to Louis Stevenson's book ' Treasure Island'.

The handles developed to tell more about the character and their associations, so the Dutchess from 'Alice in Wonderland' has a flamingo handle, the Mikado, a fan. More recently, the London 'Bobby' has both a whistle and Big Ben. The character jug from 1996 shows how far this trend has developed in the model of Jesse Owen who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics. This handle contains the Olympic torch, a contemporary US flag of the time and a banner inscribed with the name of the Olympic town 'Berlin'.

I have a few Daltons in my collection of ceramic barware. I am looking for the Long John Silver Mug, as I love the Pirate theme. I hope this thread broadens its scope to the other ceramic barware collectables in addition to Tiki Mugs.