12/09/2026
Meet Jacquot — and he is older than we first thought.
Across French Flanders the anthropomorphic jug goes by this name, his companion by Jacqueline.
Anthropomorphic in the strict sense: the vessel is modelled in human form, so the pot and the man are one and the same thing rather than a jug with a face stuck on the front. Made at Desvres, Saint-Omer, Lille and half a dozen neighbouring faïenceries, they stood on the counters of the estaminets and poured beer for generations.
In hand, the glaze settles the date. Thick, opaque, flaking away at the rim in clean little conchoidal chips over a soft buff body — true tin glaze, not the glassy faïence fine of the nineteenth century. Second half of the eighteenth century, and the costume agrees: tricorn, long coat, breeches, buckled shoes, all worn in the street rather than merely remembered by the mould.
The debt to the English Toby is plain, and in the 1760s that model was barely a generation old — this is cross-Channel influence caught while still fresh. Here the usual grand feu polychrome is set aside for a dense sponging of manganese-purple, reserved clear at the hat and face so he reads as a pale-clothed man rather than a purple one.
Sponged ornament runs deep in French faïence, from Rouen and Nevers down to Desvres, where it was the quick and thrifty alternative to the paintbrush.
Collectors like to say his good humour hides a recruiting sergeant, working the tavern until some poor soul signed his enlistment with a cross. Unproven — but look at that expression.
11 inches. Unmarked, as they invariably are. Available now, DM for details.
