Collections Online
Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales
Advanced Search
Jug
Armorial jug with an ovoid body and a capstan-shaped neck, black Jackfield glaze, replacement metal handle of loop form, heavily worn Sheffield Plate rim mount with copper inner lip and Sheffield Plate foot collar; cold-painted in colours on glaze with a seated lady wearing a blue dress with brown underskirt, and a standing gentleman wearing a feathered cap, red overcoat, blue waistcoat and white shirt, brown breeches and white socks, holding a staff in countryside setting with a tree to the left and a grassy foreground, the reverse with the coat of arms of the Wynne family, comprising three boar heads on a red shield with elaborate gilt frame-border, surmounted by a boar's head armorial crest, an armorial crest of a hound below the spout and the date 1769 in gold above the initials 'RW', painted in a free, cursive script, gilt foliage to either side of the spout, the rim mount with reeding at the lower edge, the foot collar with a scalloped edge above reeded bands.
The initials below the spout and the arms to the reverse are for Robert Wynne (1732-1798), the owner of the Garthewin estate at Llanfair Talhaiarn, near Abergele in Denbighshire. Wynne was obviously a man of sophisticated taste as he commissioned Thomas Gainsborough to paint portraits of himself and his wife in the mid 1760s. The manufacturer of the jug is not known. Cold painted decoration of this type is not normally found on Jackfield wares and it may have been applied away from the place of manufacture. It is tempting to suggest manufacture by the Swansea pottery, founded only a few years earlier. However, the position of Garthewin only a few miles away from the North Wales coast makes a Staffordshire origin for the jug just as likely.