Rare Toby jugs ready to start auction battle
ELEVEN Toby jugs dating back more than 90 years are expected to fetch up to £6,000 at auction.
The items depicting Allied war leaders were all produced in Middleport and were made in limited numbers by earthenware manufacturers Arthur J Wilkinson Ltd.
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UNIQUE COLLECTION: The collection of 11 Toby jugs that will go under the hammer at Sotheby's tomorrow.
They go up for sale at Sotheby's, in London, tomorrow.
The jugs each measure 10 inches tall and feature leaders such as King George V, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson and French Marshal Ferdinand Foch.
They were each produced in a limited edition of 1,000 pieces, except the jug of the South African leader Louis Botha, of which just 250 items were made.
Their designer, former bank clerk Sir Francis Carruthers Gould, later went on to become one of the top political caricaturists of the late Victorian and Edwardian era.
Original plans were to produce 12 Toby jugs for the set, but the final one, of Sir Winston Churchill, was pulled from production in 1915 after he resigned from the war coalition government after being held responsible for the disastrous Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns of the First World War.
A Churchill jug was finally made a quarter of a century later when he became prime minister.
Designed by Clarice Cliff, it is now one of the rarest and most sought-after Churchill Toby jugs, with only 350 produced.
Of the 11 jugs in the auction, four of them have some damage.
However, the lot is still expected to fetch between £4,000 and £6,000.
Burslem historian Fred Hughes said he wouldn't be surprised if they got even more. He said: "I suspect the value of these lies in the subject matter not the fact that they were made in the Potteries.
"I would say it would be very rare to find good pieces like that depicting leaders of that time.
"My interest would certainly be not as a Potteries historian but a social historian."
Other items up for grabs in the auction, in New Bond Street, include a Wedgwood caneware urn and cover circa 1800, estimated at £5,000 to £8,000, and a set of six Staffordshire creamware cauliflower moulded wares circa 1765 to 1775 estimated at £3,000 to £5,000.
The lot expected to make the most is a pair of George IV silver wine coolers, estimated between £60,000 and £80,000.
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