Then we’ll drink to the girls we love dearly.”
Mugs seem to have in former days been manufactured to celebrate some political event or great victory. There were the coronation mugs of the present Czar of Russia, at the distribution of which so many peasants lost their lives. The Transvaal War produced no china mementoes. Mafeking buttons and ticklers are more representative of modern feeling.
To us these old English mugs are as the dry bones which, if one is only skilful enough magician, resolve themselves into dream-pictures, historically accurate enough, of our forbears of the eighteenth century. Our children’s children, when they come to examine our everyday ware, will find little else to observe save the legend “Made in Germany.”
The field of English earthenware is very large and very diverse. We have been prohibited by space from saying anything of salt-glaze ware, of Elers, or of Astbury, and we regretfully have to pass on without touching Leeds ware. But we give an interesting illustration of a group of Mason’s jugs of the celebrated “Patent Ironstone China.” The largest of these jugs is 91⁄2 in. high. This is not a complete set, as the writer knows of the existence of a jug of smaller size, and another size between the second and third largest, which make a set of eight.
[Earliest mark 1780].
[Later Marks].
[Stamped in blue—1813].