Height: 21cm (8.2in)
Export ware glazed character Churchill jug designed by Eric Olsen for Copeland Spode, bearing the Copeland Spode backstop and presentation inscription to the base 'In Appreciation and with Grateful Thanks for the loyal cooperation A. E. Hewitt Esq MC, JP. Lord Mayor City of Stoke on Trent, (1940-41)’
Made in tandem with a version characterising President Roosevelt, this jug is believed to have been made to mark the signing of the Atlantic Charter (codenamed Riviera, August 1941) that set out the Allied war aims: ‘no territorial aggrandizement; no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people; restoration of self-government to those deprived of it; reduction of trade restrictions; global cooperation to secure better economic and social conditions for all; freedom from fear and want; freedom of the seas; and abandonment of the use of force, as well as disarmament of aggressor nations.’
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A.E. Hewitt was a Stoke-on-Trent businessman and international promoter of the city’s wares. He won the Military Cross in Salonika during the Great War. He was chairman of Copeland Ltd in the 1930s and Lord Mayor of the city 1940-41.
The designer Eric Olsen was born in Norway in 1903. He studied at the Oslo School of Art, St. Martin's School of Art, London and at the faience studio at Sèvres. He worked at Wedgwood in 1931 designing a range of Art Deco relief-moulded ornamental earthenware. He joined Spode in 1932 and is believed to have been given creative carte blanche as 'Designer and Modeller'. He is best remembered for a series of art deco animal figures. However Olsen's greatest successes were probably his Toby Jugs of Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Subsequently Olsen designed a rare statuette of Churchill leaving No.10 Downing Street. Olsen retained close ties with Norway. An exhibition of his studio type wares was opened by the Queen of Norway in London in 1937. In 1942 Olsen left the Spode company to join the Norwegian Quartermaster General’s department as a camouflage expert. After the Second World War he emigrated to the United States, where he became chief designer at Haeger in Illinois.