“The Man on the Barrel” Through Time

         

As I write this post, the image of a man on a barrel sits before me. It is decoration on a small Doulton pottery cream jug from the Cheshire Cheese tavern off Fleet Street in London, similar to the bas relief Doulton figure shown here.  “The man on the barrel” is a familiar figure to anyone interested in English pottery.    Who is he and what does he represent?  

First of all, the barrel is not just an empty keg convenient for sitting.  It holds something alcoholic, rum perhaps or “sack,” a fortified white wine from Spain much favored by Shakespeare’s Falstaff or, later, bourbon whiskey.  The man on the barrel is a drinking man — sometimes depicted as a drunkard.  For example, here is Brussels faience jug from the late 1700s that depicts a man in a blue coat and yellow pantaloons who clearly has had one too many sips from that wineskin he has next to him.

Other men on barrels of that era could be local heroes.  The one right is a reproduction of an original jug created in 1770 by Ralph Wood of Wood & Sons Pottery in Burslem, England.  The figure is identified as Admiral Lord Howe, the much maligned leader of British naval forces in the American Revolution.  This may have been made before the war with Howe looking benign and holding a foaming pot of beer.  Was it done by friend or foe?  

Skipping forward to the 19th Century is a wood engraving of the man on the barrel by Jean Frederic Wentzel, a French print-maker, born in Wissenbourg, France, in 1807.  He specialized in images of ordinary life as seen in the France of his time and was very popular.  Here he has captured a happy French peasant on a barrel with a spigot conveniently located from which to refill his bottle and glass of wine.

We are back in England with the next example, a flask of a jolly toper dubbed “Old Tom” sitting on a barrel, said to be ware from Rockingham.  Given the inscription on the base, this item is from the Victorian era, about 1850.   Also known as a “reform flask” it celebrates the Reform Act of 1832 in England.

Although he is similarly shaped and dressed, the next two fisted drinker with an all-over brown glaze is attributed to a pottery at Bennington, Vermont, dating from the early 1800s.  Bennington was a convenient location for producing pottery because of the close proximity to local clay deposits, as well as deposits along the Hudson River.  Bennington also had an abundant supply of waterpower from local streams, which was necessary to power the machinery used at the time. Around 1804 stoneware pottery was introduced and achieved notable success, eventually employing hundreds of people.

The late 1800s brought this depiction of a man sitting on a barrel while drinking a glass of wine.  It comes from the Austrian-Hungarian Empire before its demise in World War One.   My guess is the gent portrayed was a political figure who would have been recognizable to the people of the day.  

In 1896, Gustav Schafer and Gunther Vater founded a factory in Thuringa, Germany, with the purpose of making high quality porcelain items. By 1910 the reputation of the pottery for craftsmanship and design had grown to international proportions and Sears Roebuck was importing and selling large quantities of Shafer and Vater ceramics in the United States.

Among the pottery’s products were a host of small figural liquor bottles called “nips.” The term is taken from an Old English word nipperkin, meaning a container of liquor holding a half pint or less. These German giveaways were always imported empty, then filled by a distiller, whiskey distributor, or saloonkeeper and handed off to favored customers.  An example is the “Old Sedgwick” ceramic figural that carries the image of a jolly old Dutchman. It advertised a brand of whiskey from the A. Bauer Distillery of Chicago,

When National Prohibition was adopted in the U.S. in 1920, Schafer & Vater lost a major element of its business and retaliated by creating an image of Uncle Sam as the man on the barrel — a barrel that proclaims “What We Want” and shows Sam filling a glass from a bottle.  This figure also came in brown on a tray with four cups.

The final man-on-the-barrel is a contemporary image of a pirate with an eye patch and wearing a bandana.  He appears to be daring anyone to come close to tapping the keg on which he sits.  Thus we have come full circle from the jolly toper who is sitting on the barrel in order to be as near as possible to the wine or liquor that fuels his joviality.

The Art Nouveau Whiskey Jug

Among my favorite artistic movements is “Art Nouveau,” a style that burst into wide popularity about 1890 in Europe and the United States and held sway until snuffed out by the cold winds of World War One three decades later. Characterized by lavish ornamentation with lines reminiscent of twining plan tendrils or ribbons flowing in the wind, Art Nouveau was frequently used in the merchandising of the day, selling everything from bicycles and eggs to cigarette papers, throat lozenges, and -- yes -- whiskey.

An example is the Thomas Rossland scotch whisky jug, displaying a familiar Art Nouveau theme, the “Tree of Life,” with its roots, branches, leaves and some kind of round fruit. This jug recently fetched more than a $1,000 at auction. It was the product of the Doulton Lambeth Pottery , now known as Royal Doulton. Between 1882 and 1914 this British pottery manufacturer issued dozens of whiskies that incorporated highly glazed necks, shoulders, handles and bodies with Art Nouveau themes in a range of rich and colored glazes.

In the United States, by contrast, only a few distillers and whiskey dealers used the decors common to Art Nouveau. Note here a Doulton jug, predominantly brown and yellow with distinctive flowers in a drapery. Below it is an American jug that features similar flowers. It is from “Coronation Brand” and is “Scotch-type Whiskey.”

Thereby hangs a mystery. This jug is part of a series of three, all of which go under the name, Coronation Brand, but with presumably different contents. One of them is labeled “Irish Type Whiskey” and the other “Kornschnapps Style Liquor” -- a German alcoholic beverage. All profess to be “Products of Ohio.” Each reflects the Art Nouveau sensibility in the differing modes of flowing shapes that surround their labels. Two decades of trying to locate the origins of these highly unusual whiskeys has yielded me absolutely no clues.

Nor are there any clues to the potteries that might have made and designed the labels for these jugs. My suspicion is that it was Sherwood Brothers of New Brighton, Pennsylvania. (See my blog of November 2009.) This is the only U.S. pottery in my knowledge with the ability to do wrap around transfers of the good design and sophistication represented by these Art Nouveau containers. Sadly, often Sherwood Brothers did not mark their products.

Whoever made them clearly were taking cues and themes from Doulton jugs, such as the 1900 “Good Luck and Happiness to You” whiskey done in the Art Nouveau style. One final American whiskey jug done in that mode is also from Ohio. It is labeled “Finest Old Sour Mash” and was issued by the R. Brand & Company distillers from Toledo. Many of these Brand jugs carry a mark indicating that they were made in Scotland by the Port Dundas Pottery, second only to Doulton in its ability to create attractive whiskey containers.

As I continue to seek an answer to the puzzle of of these Coronation Brand jugs, it is my hope that through this blog new information may come to light. In the meantime I will treasure looking at these Art Nouveau artifacts on display in my house.