TOBY JUG COLLECTIBLES
the Toby jug was first developed and popularized in England from around 1762 by the Staffordshire potter Ralph Wood. The jug depicts a seated man wearing an English ‘tricorn’ hat and holding a mug of beer and a glass or pipe. The original jug is supposed to have been inspired by a song of 1761 AD about one Toby Philpot – ‘Dear Tom, This Brown Jug’. First other Staffordshire potteries, then workshops around England and eventually other countries copied the idea. Toby jugs are now highly collectible.
A toby Jug
Dear Tom, This Brown Jug is a song from 1761, said to have given the Toby Jug its name
Dear Tom, this brown jug, which now foams with mild ale,
Out of which I now drink to sweet Nan of the Vale,
Was once Toby Philpot, a thirsty old soul,
As e’er cracked a bottle, fathom’d a bowl; In bousing about ’twas his pride to excel,
And amongst jolly topers he bore off the bell.
It chanced as in dog days he sat at his ease,
In his flower-woven arbour, as gay as you please, With his friend and a pipe,
puffing sorrow away, And with honest Old Stingo sat soaking his clay.
His breath-doors of life on a sudden were shut, And he dies full as big as a Dorchester Butt.
His body when long in the ground it had lain, And time into clay had dissov’d it again,
A potter found out, in its covert so snug, And with part of Fat Toby he form’d this brown jug;
Now sacred to friendship, to mirth, and mild ale — So here’s to my lovely sweet Nan of the Vale.
