Stanley Melbourne Bruce Porcelain Character Jug
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Stanley Melbourne Bruce, (8th Prime Minister, 1925-28) porcelain character jug designed by Percy Metcalfe for Ashtead Pottery, limited edition 53/500 factory mark, signature an inscription on the base. 18.5 cm high. Stanley Bruce (1883-1967) was Prime Minister from 1923 to 1929. Australian-born, English-educated Bruce was a Nationalist who governed in coalition with the newly-formed Country party. He encouraged families to emigrate from Britain and settle on the land, while he secured loans from London financiers to fund infrastructure development. In turn, the British market opened up to Australian wool, wheat and other goods. After struggling with industrial relations issues, Bruce became the only Prime Minister to lose his own seat at an election. The Ashtead Pottery operated in the English village of Ashtead, Surrey, between 1923 and 1935. Set up to offer employment for disabled ex-servicemen, at the peak of its production it employed forty men to produce a broad array of wares, including commemoratives and household crockery. Percy Metcalf was one of several designers who worked for Ashtead. This jug is one of a series of four modelled by Metcalf and produced between 1925 and 1928. The other jugs depicted British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, British Attorney General Lord Hailsham, and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. The jugs were issued in numbered limited editions - 1000 each for the British Prime Ministers and 500 each for Hailsham and Bruce. In January 1929 Australian statesman Richard Casey, in London, wrote to the Australian prime minister, Stanley Bruce: 'I see that you have agreed to the Bruce toby jug being sold to the public. I inquired of the potters about it and got two of them. I think they have turned out very well indeed. If you want any I can get them and send them out.' The National Portrait Gallery's Bruce jug was spotted by the Director and Historian on a speculative autumn afternoon's visit to a multi-vendor antique market at Exhibition Park in Canberra. As it happens, it is number 1 of the rare Bruce jugs. Its provenance is unknown, but the possibility of a Casey connection is particularly tantalizing to curators.
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- Toby Jugs / Character Mugs - Toby jugs are earthenware jugs depicting the full figure of a person, usually a man, in a three-cornered hat holding a jug, of beer and a pipe or glass. They were first made in the 1760s by Wood family of potters in Staffordshire and the design was copied by other potters in the area, and later elsewhere. They were said to be inspired by song and etching of Sir Toby Phillpot, a legendary 18th century Yorkshire drinker. The style became popularily used to depict other figures including Martha Gunn (the celebrated Brighton bathing woman), The Thin Man, The Drunken Parson, Prince Hal, The Night Watchman and many others. An enormously popular genre, toby jugs have continued to be made, sometimes in porcelain, often in miniature form. Many of the modem versions have been deliberately crazed to appear old. Character jugs have been produced by Royal Doulton since the 1930s: Ronald Reagan appeared in 1984, Sir Winston Churchill in 1940, and John Barleycorn, idiot yokel, was produced from 1934 to 1960. For purists, a jug depicting head-and-shoulders only a 'character mug'.
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