LIVERPOOL MUG (6 IN. HIGH).
(Transfer-printed and partly coloured after glazing.)
From the Collection of Capt. H. F. Maclean.
Another of our illustrations is that of a Liverpool mug with subject entitled “The Tithe Pig,” in which the vicar appears to have come off worst in a wordy encounter with two of his parishioners. There is a grim humour about many of the eighteenth-century decorated mugs and jugs which are a record in ceramics of party strifes and of long-forgotten social enmities.
It will be seen that the Liverpool printed ware has in it an element of decoration which some of the other wares do not possess. Many of our readers doubtless possess specimens of this black or brown printed ware, mugs, or tiles, or teapots with old-world scenes upon them like the landscapes of our illustration. Shepherds and herds, fifers and fiddlers and dancers, village-green sports, lads and lasses “dancing the hays”—these are the homely scenes transferred from the old copper-plates.
XIV
WEDGWOOD
WEDGWOOD DINNER PLATES FROM DESIGNS IN FLAXMAN’S SKETCH-BOOK. PRODUCED OVER 100 YEARS AGO AT ETRURIA, AND STILL MADE BY THE FIRM.