Jug: C.38B-1928

Maker(s)

Production: Rye Pottery

Entities

• Jug
• hop jug
• beer jug

Categories

• Lead-glazed earthenware
• Art Pottery

Description

Earthenware 'hop jug', with moulded and applied decoration under green and brown flecked lead (?) glazes.

Earthenware with moulded and applied decoration under green and brown flecked lead (?) glazes. Squat ovoid body with pronounced shoulder, cylindrical neck, pinched at the front to form a lip, and strap handle. A wreath of hops and leaves runs round the body on and just below the shoulder. The neck is incised on one side 'J.W.L. Glaisher' and on the other '1899', The body is brown; the hops, green.

Notes

History note: Made to commission at the Rye Pottery and purchased there for £1.5s.0d. on 12 December 1899 by Dr J.W.L. Glaisher, FRS, Trinity College Cambridge

Legal notes

Dr J.W.L. Glaisher Bequest

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1928-12-07) by Glaisher, J. W. L., Dr

Dating

19th Century, Late
Victorian
Production date: AD 1899

Note

The Belle Vue Pottery at Rye was one of several English country potteries which made 'Art Pottery' as well as traditional useful wares. It was founded in 1868 by Frederick Mitchell (1819-75) whose nephew, Frederick Thomas Mitchell (1864-1920) made this jug for Dr J.W.L. Glaisher, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. In the 1870s the pottery became famous for pig-shaped flasks known as 'Sussex pigs', and for 'hop wares' which were decorated with moulded and applied wreaths of hops and glazed green and brown. Unlike many green glazes which were coloured with copper oxide, this was coloured with brass dust produced in the manufacture of pins. When F.T. Mitchell took over the pottery in 1896 on the death of his uncle's widow, he revived these wares and continued to make them in the twentieth century. When Glaisher bought this jug in 1899, Mitchell told him that the idea for the hop decoration came from the hops which twined round the door of the old Cadborough pottery at Rye, which his uncle had left in 1868. The decoration was particularly suitable for beer jugs, but was also used on other forms. A small puzzle jug decorated with a spray of oak leaves and acorns was purchased by Glaisher on another visit in 1912 (C.83C-1928).

School or Style

Art Pottery