Mug

Date1786 (dated)

MediumTin-glazed earthenware (delft) and glass

DimensionsOH: 4 3/4"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1951-126

DescriptionCylindrical mug, slightly flared at base, with loop handle and glass bottom. Blue tin glaze decorated in blue with a European landscape and men seining; inside the handle, the initials IH, and on the handle base terminal, the date 1786.
Label TextThis delft mug features a clear, glass bottom. The fabled story that the glass-bottom mug allows a man to drink his beer and watch the door at the same time sounds more like the American West of the 1880s than the England of a hundred years earlier. Of the seventeen dated delft mugs recorded from the last two decades of the eighteenth century, thirteen have glass bottoms, three cannot be assessed, and only one has a clay bottom. There are, of course, undated clay-bottomed mugs that can be assigned to these years on stylistic grounds, but the glass-bottomed examples generally have dates and initials or names, which suggests that they were intended to be special.

The London attribution for this mug is based on the shape and the dark blue decoration.
InscribedInside the handle, the initials IH, and on the handle base terminal the date 1786.
MarkingsNo
ProvenanceLouis Gautier
Lord Revelstoke
D. M. & P. Manheim, New York