57 - HOP JUG: Belle Vue Pottery, Rye, Sussex, 1899

Summary

Earthenware decorated with applied moulded hops and green and brown glazes. Inscribed on the neck ‘J.W.L. Glaisher 1899’. Mark: ‘Rye Pottery/F Mitchell/1899/ incised into base. Height 22.1 cm. C.38B–1928.

The Belle Vue Pottery at Rye was one of several English country potteries which made ‘Art Pottery’ as well as traditional useful wares. It was founded in 1868 by Frederick Mitchell (1819–75) whose nephew, Frederick Thomas Mitchell (1864–1920), made this jug for Dr J.W.L. Glaisher, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. In the 1870s the pottery became famous for pig-shaped flasks known as ‘Sussex pigs’, and ‘hop wares’ which were decorated with moulded and applied wreaths of hops and glazed green and brown. Unlike many green glazes which were derived from copper, this was coloured with brass dust produced in the manufacture of pins. When F.T. Mitchell took over the pottery in 1896 on the death of his uncle's widow, he revived these wares and continued to make them in the early twentieth century. A small puzzle jug decorated with a spray of oak leaves and acorns was purchased by Glaisher on another visit in 1912 (Fitzwilliam Museum, C.83c–1928).