January Jugs

Well, we nearly didn't go to the car boot sale this morning as we knew it was going to be dire down there, due to the weather.  Plus buyers have also been very thin on the ground recently and when the dealers can't make enough to barely cover their costs, then they go elsewhere to sell - and who can blame them?  15 vehicles were sparsely parked inside the showground building and it didn't take long to look round today! 

Anyway, on one stall I noticed these pretty jugs, marked at just £1 each.  In my farmhouse kitchen, I have jugs hanging from the beams and although many of them are damaged, when they are hanging up, you don't notice the chips and cracks (or even staples on some of them!)  I knew they were coming home with me! 

The top jug comes under the loose category of Gaudy Welsh (though these were almost exclusively made in the Staffordshire potteries and not Welsh factories).  It has a hexagonal shape, with a Hydra-headed handle (like the other one I bought recently), and I haven't found a name for the design on it yet.  However, it does have silver and gilt gilding so to some purists, isn't classic Gaudy.  It dates from around 1820 (I think) and I love it anyway.  The little pewter flip top means it was used for hot water to top up the teapot.

This jug is very much later - the pattern (Shanghai) was in use from Edwardian times to the middle of the 1930s.  On the bottom it is stamped Losal Ware, Shanghai, Keeling & Co, Burslem and the pattern number painted on.  Again, it was a hot water jug and part of a tea service.  Not exciting, but pretty and will look nice on display.

They cheered me up anyway, and I needed cheering up as I had spent a really wretched night - unable to get to sleep for hours, and then woken after less than 2 hours sleep with very bad pleuritic pain.  I took painkillers, and sat up in bed in a woolley jumper, drinking Earl Grey and reading an old pony book from my youth.  Finally, about 5.30 a.m. I dropped off.  This necessitated a visit to the Out of Hours Doc at the hospital, and he decided that I had not been taking sufficient painkillers (well, Ibuprofen) to control the pain and reduce the inflammation (guilty as charged, as my tummy was getting sore from Ibuprofen and Steroids).  He prescribed stronger pills and a protective pill to stop my stomach being damaged by all the painkillers etc.

I shall start on those tomorrow, and in the meantime, at least my lungs sound clear (long may that continue), so let's hope I am going the right way.  I am gradually stepping down off the steroids now, and in 5 days will be off them completely and hopefully sleeping better.

Thanks for listening to my endless health moans and I hope you like the jugs.