This morning I headed out to The Potteries Museum. I’ve already written about this collection here and here, but there’s lots of other fun stuff there. Let’s look at some iron age, Roman, and Saxon gold before we get on to the pottery.

The spitfire plane has been taken to bits for refurbishment, so let’s go upstairs to the china collection. Shakespeare’s drunks were always calling for a jug of sack. This is what it looked like.

Also from the 17th century is this little owl pot.

The head is the lid and comes off. This piece turned up on Antiques Roadshow in 1990 and the museum raised funds to buy it.

More owls. Goofy owls.

This lady is wearing a crown, so she’s probably a queen, but it doesn’t seem to have made her happy.

For Nick, the biggest De Morgan pot I have seen. It’s huge.

A nice example of the stuff that De Morgan was trying to reproduce.

I think this was bigger than a real peacock.

Q: What would you like to decorate the mantelpiece.
A: How about someone being stabbed to death?

The Afsafsination of MARAT. by CHARLOTTE. CORDE. of Caen, in Normandy, 1703

Or perhaps you’d prefer a bull being torn to bits by dogs, which used to be a popular entertainment around here.

The toby jugs look like they were designed by Hogarth.

Let’s not decorate the mantelpiece after all. It’s fine on its own.

Here are some more goodies I don’t have any commentary for.

There are two temporary exhibits, one devoted to the color blue and the other to transgressive LBGTQ art. I was apparently the only person interested in the LGBTQ gallery.

My favorite artist in this exhibition was Sadie Lee who painted hard core lesbian erotica in surroundings reminiscent of Boucher. Here’s Boucher’s Jupiter and Callisto from the Wallace Collection, and here’s [WARNING NSFW] Sadie Lee’s. Jupiter had taken on the guise of the goddess Diana to seduce the nymph Callisto, instead of his usual transformations into a bull, a battle swan, or a shower of gold.

So, all in all a great museum experience. But wait, aren’t we missing something. Not at all. They have a teapot with a battle swan…

… and a skull.