Curious China Ware
Old china and pottery have been fully dealt with by many specialist writers, but there are some household curios made of porcelain, china, and earthenware which cannot be omitted from this survey of household curios. Foremost among these are the now scarce Toby jugs, made at so many of the famous potteries. In a large collection the variations are at once recognized; yet the same idea seems to have run through the minds of the artists in fashioning these jugs, so essentially typical of the age in which they were made and used. Among the Sunderland jugs are many variations both in size and colouring; they were rich in colours, too, and look exceedingly well on an old cabinet.
The posset cups of silver were supplemented by tygs and posset cups and many-handled drinking cups of early Staffordshire make. The brown and yellow slip decoration of this ware is a striking characteristic. All the early seventeenth-century ale drinking cups like the tygs had handles, and in those days of conviviality the double or multiplied handle served a useful purpose, for the vessels were in use when it was the custom of the ale-house for several friends to drink out of one vessel, just as in more polite society and on public occasions the loving cup was passed round.
Some of the so-called portrait busts and statuettes of the eighteenth century are especially interesting to collectors. There are figures to suit all; musicians may delight in that of Handel; others in the busts of Wesley and Whitfield; explorers in the statue of Benjamin Franklin made about 1770, and some in that of John Wilks seated near an old column of a still earlier date. There is also a cleverly modelled figure of Geoffrey Chaucer. One of the best known groups is that of the “Vicar and Moses,” made by Wood, of Burslem.