Charles Meigh adapted his own jug design to create a striking mug with a subject appropriate to drinking and intoxication. The complex figural compositions are based on paintings well known at the time--especially to a cultivated individual like Meigh.

The rapturous dancers flinging themselves across one side of the mug are derived from Poussin's "Bacchanalian Revel Before a Term of Pan," a painting that had already entered the collection of London's National Gallery. The less active aspect of inebriation is depicted on the reverse in a composition based on a Rubens painting "Drunken Silenus." Silenus, his body showing advanced signs of dissipation, requires the support of two satyrs to remain upright. Both paintings are captured in surprising detail--with a few loincloths added to preserve Victorian sensibilities.

Meigh frames his three dimensional interpretations of these masterpieces with an abundance of grape clusters and vines, adapting the mature grapevine for the  handle and woven band around the foot.

In 1846 the Society of Arts, with encouragement from its president Prince Albert, established a competition aimed at improving the design of manufactured goods. The criteria called for "articles of elegant form, made of cheap materials, and suited to the use of everyday life" (Atterbury & Batkin. The Dictionary of Minton, p.201.) The special printed mark of Meigh's "Bacchanalian Dance" mug commemorated the silver medal awarded to this design in 1847.