Lambeth Doulton Tobacco Jars

[MisterBadger]

Found this tobacco-jar on eBay the other day, and couldn't resist. ~ The legend, from 'Westward Ho!' by the Rev. Charles Kingsley, reads:

"When all things were made, none was made better than Tobacco - to be a lone Man's Companion, a Bachelor's Friend, a hungry Man's food , a sad Man's cordial, a wakeful Man's Sleep, and a chilly Man's Fire - there's no herb like it under the Canopy of Heaven".

The factory stamp on the base identifies it as having been made at the Doulton works in Lambeth, London, between 1891 and 1901. It is signed by the artist Ethel Beard, who worked for Doulton & Co. from about 1890 until the early 1930s and who, as well as being a ceramic designer in her own right, collaborated with such Art Nouveau luminaries as Aubrey Beardsley, Romain de Tirtoff ("Erté"), and Alfons Mucha.

 

[MisterBadger]

And another one...

The parlour in the Bailiff's Cottage at Acton Scott Heritage Farm, which purports to show rural working life in Shropshire around 1900, and where Mrs. Badger and I work, was recently decorated for Christmas. In the middle of the mantelpiece was a pipe-rack, into which someone (I never found out who, after two years making enquiries) put a 1975 silver mounted Peterson. Last year, I took it home for identification, cleaned it, and put it back. If you don't examine the hallmark, it will pass muster for 1900.

Anyway, there is an element among our colleagues who want to project their C21st idea of what a Victorian Christmas ought to have been like, and who also think that Smoking- Is-Bad-And-We-Should-Not-Promote-It-In-Any-Way-Whatsoever-But-Airbrush-It-Out-Of-History. Knowing what I would have to say about that, Mrs. Badger intervened and stopped them from removing the pipe and the rack. So they occluded it with pine cones and evergreens instead. OK, I know that a virulent anti-smoking lobby existed in 1900, but... Not In My House (even if I don't actually live in it).

This is my response: I added three clay pipes to the rack, and this tobacco jar. Because every Victorian working man in Britain who could afford it, had a rack of clays and a jar of tobacco for his guests to help themselves. According to my grandmother, my great-grandfather certainly did.

The base of the jar has the 'Doulton, Lambeth, England' stamp, which dates it from 1891, and the artist's mark, also on the base, is by Clara Baker, who worked at the Lambeth factory until 1897. In a smoking household that wasn't desperately poor, a tobacco jar was as commonplace as a teapot - and one like this would have been quite affordable to better-paid blue-collar workers. Mrs. Badger finalised my choice of several, and calls it "aspirational".

 

[Boko_Fittleworth]

Wonderful pictures! There is a working 19th c. farm/living history museum near where I live. As of last summer, there were still a couple of pipes on the desk.

 

[Boko_Fittleworth]

@MisterBadger. Serendipitously, my wife and I just started watching the Victorian Farm - Christmas - miniseries on Amazon Prime (I believe it is from the BBC). Is that the same farm?

 

[tartanphantom]

And another one...

The parlour in the Bailiff's Cottage at Acton Scott Heritage Farm, which purports to show rural working life in Shropshire around 1900, and where Mrs. Badger and I work, was recently decorated for Christmas. In the middle of the mantelpiece was a pipe-rack, into which someone (I never found out who, after two years making enquiries) put a 1975 silver mounted Peterson. Last year, I took it home for identification, cleaned it, and put it back. If you don't examine the hallmark, it will pass muster for 1900.

Anyway, there is an element among our colleagues who want to project their C21st idea of what a Victorian Christmas ought to have been like, and who also think that Smoking- Is-Bad-And-We-Should-Not-Promote-It-In-Any-Way-Whatsoever-But-Airbrush-It-Out-Of-History. Knowing what I would have to say about that, Mrs. Badger intervened and stopped them from removing the pipe and the rack. So they occluded it with pine cones and evergreens instead. OK, I know that a virulent anti-smoking lobby existed in 1900, but... Not In My House (even if I don't actually live in it).

This is my response: I added three clay pipes to the rack, and this tobacco jar. Because every Victorian working man in Britain who could afford it, had a rack of clays and a jar of tobacco for his guests to help themselves. According to my grandmother, my great-grandfather certainly did.

The base of the jar has the 'Doulton, Lambeth, England' stamp, which dates it from 1891, and the artist's mark, also on the base, is by Clara Baker, who worked at the Lambeth factory until 1897. In a smoking household that wasn't desperately poor, a tobacco jar was as commonplace as a teapot - and one like this would have been quite affordable to better-paid blue-collar workers. Mrs. Badger finalised my choice of several, and calls it "aspirational".
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Very Nice!

As they say in your neck of the woods, "Happy Christmas!"
The traditional crackers on the table are a nice touch. Also love the use of the electric candle lights on the tree. They give the classic Victorian/Edwardian atmosphere, but are much safer than the traditional real candles!

Only thing missing are some long tinder "fags" by the fireplace with which to use for pipe lighting, and maybe a couple of mulling pokers waiting next to them.

Perhaps they're there, but out of the shot?

Last thing, since you are adjacent to the Black Country, are you burning the traditional coal, or wood?

 

[MisterBadger]

@MisterBadger. Serendipitously, my wife and I just started watching the Victorian Farm - Christmas - miniseries on Amazon Prime (I believe it is from the BBC). Is that the same farm?

@Boko_Fittleworth Mostly the same farm, yes - that's Home Farm, on the Acton Scott estate (advertised as Acton Scott Heritage Farm); though two other locations were used on the estate as well when BBC2 were filming the main series: Glebe Farm, where the pigsties were built, and Henley Farm, which has a bigger kitchen for the film crew and their equipment, and a spare patch of grass to turn into a cottage garden from scratch (I have no idea why they did that, as the Bailiff's Cottage on the Home Farm had one already).

The Christmas miniseries also used the parlour of Acton Scott Hall (occasionally open to the public but separate), where you see the series principals Ruth, Alex and Peter, gathered together with the extended Acton family and one or two employees and their children, with tree and presents in front of a blazing fire.

Ruth was back at Acton Scott Heritage Farm last summer, filming 'A Farm Through Time' for Channel5 (not yet released), together with Raksha Dave of Channel4's 'Time Team'. Mrs. B. looked after them and the film crew in the Bailiff's Cottage, and I, in the Bailiff's Garden.

 

[MisterBadger]

Very Nice!

As they say in your neck of the woods, "Happy Christmas!"
The traditional crackers on the table are a nice touch. Also love the use of the electric candle lights on the tree. They give the classic Victorian/Edwardian atmosphere, but are much safer than the traditional real candles!

Only thing missing are some long tinder "fags" by the fireplace with which to use for pipe lighting, and maybe a couple of mulling pokers waiting next to them.

Perhaps they're there, but out of the shot?

Last thing, since you are adjacent to the Black Country, are you burning the traditional coal, or wood?

@tartanphantom And a Happy Christmas to you, too There was no way we could dare to use real candles on the tree, and in a Grade 1 listed building at that, without breaching our buildings and public liability insurance! The trustees would have fainting fits if I even suggested it. We live in very different times, and that rather does cramp our style somewhat, regarding what we can and can't do on the Farm. If the cottage had burned down as a result in 1900, they would simply have shrugged, said it was old anyway, pulled down the blackened ruins and built a nice new, modern one.

You are absolutely right, of course, about the "fags" - we call them "spills". My grandparents used to keep a jar of them on the mantelpiece. I must supply some. And ale-mulling is a good idea to demonstrate.

We use both coal and wood, for economy (we are a charity and there's plenty of timber on the estate, which is free). In the Victorian era, the nearest coal used to be mined in the Clee Hills, 20 miles away from Acton Scott. The coal company ran a branch line to the main Shrewsbury-Hereford railway and the nearest station to the Farm would have been at Marshbrook, just over a mile away by horse and cart. Wood is great for heating a room, but for cooking on the cast-iron range an intense heat from coal is far better - and we also use coal for the forge in the smithy and wheelwright's shop.

There's very little coal mining still going on in UK now, though we've still lots of it underground. Nowadays, if you want to burn coal in Britain at all, you have to go to a coal merchant and sign a form stating that you are either a Living History Museum, a steam railway, and/or a registered charity. Unbelievable, isn't it? And that means a 60-mile round trip by road to Leominster. And with the added transport mileage from mine to distribution point, I'm not entirely sure that this is ecological progress. I'll restrain myself from saying any more on the subject.

 

[Christos D. Tsatsaronis]

Kind of like coming from a Charles Dickens book all this stuff in the photos (except the laptop)... nice, thank you!

 

[huntertrw]

Given the age of these jars, do you know whether or not their glaze included lead as an ingredient? If so, then this could pose a health hazard if tobacco comes in direct contact with it.

Otherwise, they are both beautiful!

 

[MisterBadger]

Given the age of these jars, do you know whether or not their glaze included lead as an ingredient? If so, then this could pose a health hazard if tobacco comes in direct contact with it.

Otherwise, they are both beautiful!

@huntertrw - These jars are almost certainly lead-glazed, as a production expedient. But given the age of me, the fact that I've spent most of my life drinking water fed through lead pipes, *and* that I've been using tobacco since age 17, I think any additional risk posed by a lead-glazed tobacco-jar would be minuscule. While it is true that certain tobaccos - especially those I like best - are acidic and therefore likeliest to leach whatever lead there is from the glaze, the lid on the jar is not airtight and perhaps the discerning Victorian smoker would keep his tobacco wrapped in waxed paper, thus insulating it from any lead glaze leachage (even though their intent would merely have been to keep the tobacco fresh).

 

[DesertDan]

Beautiful jars. and interesting history.

 

[Briarcutter]

lead as an ingredient? If so, then this could pose a health hazard if tobacco comes in direct contact with it.

IMO, which isn't worth much, the whole lead thing is over blown. The biggest health danger of lead is if it enters the body in the form of a bullet

 

[Day2Day]

Love these jars and the history behind them. Who cares about lead content they're more of a display of where the pipe lifestyle came from and a great decoration for one's cabinet. Wonderful find congrats.

 

[huntertrw]

Who cares about lead content...

Just concerned about a fellow pipe-man.

 

[MisterBadger]

Just concerned about a fellow pipe-man.

And your comments were received in the spirit in which they were intended - thank you.

 

[Day2Day]

Just concerned about a fellow pipe-man.

I can only speak for myself, but I wouldn't use it for storing tobacco, maybe cleaners or something, but it would be an art piece on the shelf. That's all I meant with my comment.

 

[BigR]

Very nice jars. I love your fireplace and home decor.

 

[tartanphantom]

Just thinking, @MisterBadger , when the table is finally set for Christmas dinner, authenticity would be kicked into high gear with one of those newly acquired Brecon geese sitting dressed (and I don't mean a goose in a tuxedo ) and ready to eat on that table, with roast potatoes and asparagus, perhaps an oyster pie/casserole, baked apples, a cranberry or lingonberry wreath, and a flaming Christmas pudding! Served with a warming winter porter and perhaps claret and ruby port.

I draw the line at stargazy pie, though... it's just... too weird, unless you're Cornish.

I suppose you already have a menu planned, though.

 

[MisterBadger]

Just thinking, @MisterBadger , when the table is finally set for Christmas dinner, authenticity would be kicked into high gear with one of those newly acquired Brecon geese sitting dressed (and I don't mean a goose in a tuxedo ) and ready to eat on that table, with roast potatoes and asparagus, perhaps an oyster pie/casserole, baked apples, a cranberry or lingonberry wreath, and a flaming Christmas pudding! Served with a warming winter porter and perhaps claret and ruby port.

I draw the line at stargazy pie, though... it's just... too weird, unless you're Cornish.

I suppose you already have a menu planned, though.

@tartanphantom Mrs. Badger has the menu already planned. It's pretty much the same every year, apart from what bird we choose as the centrepiece (a capon this year, as there's only the two of us at home). I think she would object to the asparagus since the only way you can get to eat it at Christmas Dinner in Victorian England, is to harvest it in May or June, blanch it and pickle it in brine. But I may suggest that for next year, even though the traditional green vegetable for the meal here is Brussels sprouts... meanwhile, the Brecon geese (three geese and a gander) are for breeding for a while. But Dulcie, our Gloucester Old Spot sow, is on notice that if she isn't in pig after her visit to a boar in Hereford (and he doesn't fire blanks), she'll be ham, sausages and bacon. An idle threat actually, but I'm hoping it works...

 

[tartanphantom]

@tartanphantom Mrs. Badger has the menu already planned. It's pretty much the same every year, apart from what bird we choose as the centrepiece (a capon this year, as there's only the two of us at home). I think she would object to the asparagus since the only way you can get to eat it at Christmas Dinner in Victorian England, is to harvest it in May or June, blanch it and pickle it in brine. But I may suggest that for next year, even though the traditional green vegetable for the meal here is Brussels sprouts... meanwhile, the Brecon geese (three geese and a gander) are for breeding for a while. But Dulcie, our Gloucester Old Spot sow, is on notice that if she isn't in pig after her visit to a boar in Hereford (and he doesn't fire blanks), she'll be ham, sausages and bacon. An idle threat actually, but I'm hoping it works...

I suppose that a lightly capered capon is the next best substitute for a fatted goose.
As for the sow, looks like its "getting-down-to-brass tacks" time for her. I'm sure you'd prefer a nice litter of piglets to raise and sell, as opposed to the alternative.