Along with fancy figures (illustration 22) came jugs listed as "fancy by the importers, and intended for show rather than use. Thomas McAdam's advertisement in the MontrΘal Morning Courier (August 14,1835) particularized "Drab Stone Jugs." The three shown here are of stoneware, two being of a drab colour.
The jug on the left is commemorative, celebrating the laying of the Atlantic cable between Ireland and Newfoundland in 1858. That joint British-American venture is symbolized by the British flag on one side, and the American on the other. Around the base runs the message flashed across the ocean on August 18: "Glory to God in the Highest on Earth Peace & Good Will Towards Men. Europe and America United by Telegraph."
The centre jug (the only one of these three marked by its maker, Jones & Walley of Staffordshire who registered the pattern in 1842) has a gypsy design. The QuΘbec antiquarian, F.M. Fairchild, writing in 1908, recorded one of these jugs at Cap Rouge. It had been broken and discarded but Fairchild retrieved it as nostalgic evidence of the Victorian past he himself had known.
The third jug illustrates the same interest in distant lands evident in many patterns on tableware (illustration 10). The relief design (usual in fancy stoneware jugs) depicts a mounted camel rider amid palms.
Fancy jugs might also be of printed earthenware. In 1851, Louisa Stacey wrote from her home in QuΘbec's Eastern Townships that she had seen printed jugs on sale commemorating the Great Exhibition then taking place in London. Articles such as these, she noted, seemed to reach Canada "so much quicker than they used to now that steam ships are running."
Courtesy: National Museum of Man, National Museums of Canada (S81-22)
