Topic: My wierd two-faced milk jug

[spacefinder]

Hi, I've been refered to you from the glass message board as I original thought the piece I'm curious about was milk-glass. It turns out it is porcelain, but has no marks and I'd be grateful if anyone could give me any info about it.
Thank you for your help.

[Anne]

Hi again, welcome to the Pottery board, now let's see if we can find anything about your jug.

I'm thinking that if we can pin down who it's portraying that we may be able to find out who made it... it looks like it's meant to be a real person as opposed to e.g. Bacchus or the Green Man.

Now, I see you're in South Africa, so can you give us a little background about it? How did it come to you, were you told anything about it which might give a clue as to its origins?

[spacefinder]

Hi,

thank you.
 
I don't know anything about it at all. I doubt very much if it was locally made. It has a fair amount of condensed dust and dirt in the bottom of it, so it has obviously been standing on a shelf somewhere for some time.

A supposition is that it has Dutch origin, simply because of the bearded face - van Riebeck perhaps? But thats a guess. The face on the reverse is very similar, but from a different mould, I think. The porcelain is very thin which makes it translucent when held to the light. It stands about 11cms high. More than that I don't know.

[antiquerose123]

Hi there and Welcome.....

To me he sorta () looks like Zeus (greek god) with a hat....May we see the face on the other side...

[spacefinder]

Hi, yes, here is other side:

[spacefinder]

Whoops.

[Anne E.B.]

He appears to be wearing a bow tie, so that would help date him from late Victorian times onwards perhaps.  His hat looks something like a member of the judiciary would wear IMHO.
Sorry, just thinking outloud...

[Anne]

I was thinking about the bow tie as well...  I think he's probably someone who was well-known in his day - the hat has me puzzled though.  He looks to me an odd combination of old and new (if you know what I mean) - the hair and whiskers indicate an older style than does the hat and tie...  it's fascinating. Let's see what we can find....

[Carolyn Preston]

If he has two faces, could it be a rendition of the God Janus (where January come from). Don't know if it is greek or roman or norse mythology though.

Carolyn

[Tigerchips]

This 'might' be what's known as a 'porcelain blank'. I remember watching something about it on the Antiques Roadshow a while back. They were Toby jugs made by Royal Worcester or Royal Doulton and something bad happened during the firing process so they kept them blank rather than painting them and sold them cheaper. However, this doesn't seem to be a Toby jug, so maybe this is something a bit older (older than the companies I've just mentioned!), which was intended to be made in one factory and then shipped over to another but was cancelled due to a fault, lets say, the grit you can see inside the jug, or maybe a small chip on the rim either above or beneath the glaze. I could be wrong though.

One things for sure, I like the sharpness of the moulding. Let me just say that i would hang onto this one if it were mine. 

[Anne E.B.]

I think this is a 'character' jug because just the head is shown, whereas 'Toby jugs' have a body - if I remember correctly...