Small earthernware pots with decorated lids began to be produced in Staffordshire about 1760. They were ideal for packaging bear's grease hair lotions, ointments, tooth powder and by the mid-nineteenth century, the manufacturers of fish and meat pastes found them to be ideal for enhancing the presentation of their products.
Felix Pratt, (1813-94) introduced multicoloured printing on ceramics in 1846. In brief, this process was a series of seperate paper transfers, one for each of four colours and a black key plate applied to a unglazed, fired pot. When the colours were dried, the pot was glazed.
Mid-nineteenth century.
With the base jar.
A small manufacturing blemish but otherwise in excellent condition.