GUEST: Well, it belonged to my sister. Now, it could have been anywhere from to California to Ohio, because she moved around quite a bit. The last place she was was in Westlake, Ohio.
APPRAISER: Okay.
GUEST: She had an antiques store there. Then she got married and gathered up and went West. The stuff that she had that didn't get shipped with her was left with me, though I gave her $500 for about 12 boxes of...
APPRAISER: Of just antiques?
GUEST: Mostly antiques. This is one of the things that I set aside.
APPRAISER: This is a piece of Ohio stoneware. It's a particular kind of stoneware called a harvest jug. So here's a spout to pour into, and then there's a couple spouts here. They're a little fun, right?
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: And the guy's name is signed here, "William Rose," so he was the owner of this naughty harvest jug. But when you spin it around, it gets even more interesting, right?
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: Because we've got a date here, "November, 1883." Presumably, that's when it was made, or commemorating some event in Mr. Rose's life. We keep spinning it around, we see inscribed here, "Second Amendment Jug." So the second amendment is the right to bear arms, right? So it's a comment about bearing arms, but considering the naughty nature of this, there may be a double entendre here. You keep spinning it around and there's more. So we have "Old Rye Whiskey" here with a cross at the top, and then we have "Christy Town Pottery Works." Christy Town is a little spot in a crossroads about an hour and a half east of here in Mahoning County, Ohio.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: So this is a Mahoning County, Ohio harvest jug, and it is a very rare form of harvest jug. This double-spouted erotic harvest jug, there are only a few of these known from Ohio, and this is one of them. I want to show everybody the bottom because the bottom is also kind of neat because there's a figure there with two legs, and he's doing something. We can all imagine what he's doing there. What I love about this... so you look at the chips all around the bottom. This jug was really used. Somebody really used this and was proud of this jug to the extent, in fact, that there was a handle, a loop handle that is now broken away.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: So it's a kind of jug that we really don't know much about. The Christy Town Pottery was more than likely a very small pottery, and a lot of scholars about Ohio stoneware refer to these as bluebird potteries, meaning that they were used in the summer, where somebody might make a few jugs, a few stoneware crocks, and then they'd close up and work the farm and go back to doing what their real occupation is. So the Christy Town Pottery Works could have been a small bluebird pottery. The interesting thing about this jug is that William Rose ordered this jug. This was not sort of standard production. It was something that he would have said, "I want you to make me this. I want you to put 'Second Amendment Jug' on it, I want you to say 'Old Rye Whiskey.'" Whether it actually held whiskey or whether he was using this in the field to drink water out of, we don't know. It's damaged. That of course hurts it. As is, I think a good auction estimate would be between $4,000 and $6,000. If it had the handle, it would be worth double that, maybe $8,000 to $10,000 or even more. It's a very rare form, and you just don't see this kind of jug very often in Ohio.
GUEST: Yeah, I thought about having it repaired and having a handle put on there, but I like it.
APPRAISER: I would advise you not to restore it because stoneware collectors actually place less value on a restored piece. Just leave it the way it is and enjoy it, and think about the day that William Rose broke the handle and what he might have said, knowing the kind of guy he was to have this sort of naughty jug.
GUEST: He probably got loaded and dropped it!
APPRAISER: Probably so.
