20 - HUNTING MUG: probably Vauxhall Pottery, 1730

Summary

Salt-Blazed stoneware with incised and applied decoration and the inscription ‘Drink about Boys to the Pious Memory of Queen Ann/Mary Bayley/1730’. Height 21.5 cm. C.2–1937.

Hunting was a ubiquitous sport in the eighteenth century, whether for hares, the commonest form, or for foxes and stags. Its popularity is reflected in the frequent occurrence of hunting scenes on English ceramics, such as the brown salt-glazed stoneware ‘hunting mugs’ made in London and Bristol. These are decorated on the exterior with an applied hare, stag or fox hunt, usually with several other motifs above, such as busts of monarchs, inn signs, the arms of City Companies, punch-drinking scenes and cottages. In addition, some bear their owner's initials or name and a date, occasionally accompanied by a place name or the owner's occupation.

This mug belongs to a group which all have the hunt proceeding in a clockwise direction. They were probably made at the Vauxhall Pottery between about 1713 and 1744, the dates on the earliest and latest recorded specimens. Some are inscribed round the rim with a toast to the memory of Queen Anne or two lines from the second verse of a popular hunting ballad, ‘On Banstead Downs a hare we found of Which led us all a smoaking round.’ On this mug the toast is accompanied by a bust of Queen Anne flanked by beefeaters, an incised church and two hand-modelled Boscobel Oaks, each harbouring a head of Charles II. The same pottery made mugs decorated with busts of George I or George II with Queen Caroline, so it seems likely that the choice of motifs reflected their owners’ loyalty to the Stuart or Hanoverian lines.