A modified version of Wedgwood's "Club" shape jug -- its profile exaggerated and its body grown more bulbous -- provides the ground for a fantasy artifact of the ancient Mediterranean. The red stoneware body is enameled in black, white and a red very close in tone to the body itself.

Against a black field a three figure frieze has been created. In the center is a stylized swallow, the feathers of its splayed wings creating a rhythmic pattern. The bird is flanked on each side by a crouching sphinx. The girlish head and torso tops almost bird-like front feet and is joined to leonine hind-quarters. From their shoulders arch curled wings, adorned with an abstract pattern of rows of white dots.

The elaborate impressed mark on the base not only declares that this is "The Egyptian Jug," but also that it is sold exclusively by Woollard & Hattersley of Cambridge.

Obviously the notion of a sphinx--in the mid-nineteenth century or today--conjures up a vision of ancient Egypt. This may explain why "The Egyptian Jug" features a Greek style sphinx -- the Egyptian version of the beast had no wings. In addition, the style of painting bears a closer resemblance to archaic Greek vase painting and reliefs than to any products of Egyptian culture. Our sphinxes are the sisters of the one confronted by Oedipus (though in truth they look more seductive than murderous).

"The Egyptian Jug" creates a quite different impression from the enameled vases of the eighteenth century that were inspired by William Hamilton's collection of Greek ceramics. Much less sedate and scholarly, this jug is a foretaste of the lively cultural eclecticism that would flourish in the second half of the nineteenth century.