Circa 1915-20
One of a total of 350 and from the well known set of Great War Toby Jugs designed by the political cartoonist Sir Francis Carruthers Gould (1844-1925) , this jug was 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.
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 that from which bitterness and cynicism were notably absent. He was knighted in 1906.