It is driven by two soldier charioteers, one bearing a flag on a pole, and the other an imperial eagle standard. What drew my attention first was the image moulded on the sides: a Roman chariot pulled by two prancing horses galloping across a hilly landscape. When I got it home from the charity shop, I knew nothing about this jug other than what it told me itself – a Victorian moulded blue-glazed earthenware jug. A jug which, frankly, is about as far away as a jug can get from any of the characteristics of studio pottery. Indeed, so likely am I to be beguiled by non-studio-pottery jugs that I have blogged about them on more than one occasion, as here and here.Īnd now here I am again blogging about yet another jug made long before the studio pottery movement was so much as a twinkle in Bernard Leach’s eye. There is however, a certain predictability about what classes of objects are likeliest to attract my attention and to lead me astray from the studio pottery path. And an incidental eye to making an occasional profit from re-sale while learning something new at the same time. A magpie-like attraction to shiny and eye-catching objects. A disinclination for in-depth study or research. I get hooked and then I lose interest, and then go back. My tastes and interests are wide and ever-changing. In fact I find quite often that if I happen to spot any kind of interesting and/or attractive object, and if I happen to find that object affordable, however foreign it may be to my current collecting interests, I’ll buy it willy-nilly. I feel no compulsion to accumulate a full set of anything or a full representation of work by any particular maker or in any particular style. Some people set out on their collecting lives with a focus on a particular type of object, and never change that focus, becoming ever-increasingly single-minded and obsessive in pursuit of the last rare piece to complete a collection or set. Regular readers of the Random Treasure Blog will already know that despite my main collecting interest being modern British studio pottery, I am not a purist, not a completist. But I know and you know that I’m coming home with you.” And so it did. I know perfectly well that I’m not to your current taste. You’ve never seen anything quite like me before. Here’s what it said: “I’m a Victorian moulded blue-glazed earthenware jug. There it was in the Oxfam shop, in the middle of a sea of dross, and it spoke to me. My local charity shops have been going through a particularly thin patch with scarcely an interesting pot to be found for weeks and weeks. My taste in pottery tends towards late twentieth century modernism and brownness. Some in the house, several in the shed, and I’m not even going to get on to the subject of the attic. See what I mean? Yes, there’s an odd pot out. Does anything look strange? Does anything look anomalous?
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