Height: 27cm (10.2in)
One of the series of Toby Jugs representing Allied leaders and commanders designed by the political cartoonist Sir Francis Carruthers Gould (1844-1925) and produced by Wilkinsons Ltd., at the Royal Staffordshire Pottery, Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent between 1915 and 1920, and retailed by Soane & Smith, Oxford Street, London. The Sir John French jug was one of 350 produced.
The designer Sir Francis Carruthers Gould was born in Barnstaple and worked at the Stock Exchange where he sketched the members and illustrated notable events in the financial world. In 1887 he became a contributor to the Pall Mall Gazette, transferring his allegiance to the Westminster Gazette on its foundation and subsequently acting as assistant editor. Frequently grafting his ideas onto subjects taken from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and the works of Dickens and Shakespeare, Gould exercised his craft with a kindly satire from which bitterness and cynicism were notably absent. He was knighted in 1906.