“Character Resolved into Clay”: The Toby Jug, Eighteenth-Century English Ceramics, and the Rise of Consumer Culture

Why was the Toby jug so popular? And why is this novelty item still so popular? How was this porcelain drinking vessel made, and how was this making a significant accomplishment for English potteries? The Toby jug can reveal much about how people are figured as individuals and as consumers. First, this essay summarizes the rise of the English ceramic tradition, reviewing the technologies that made possible the manufacture of items like the Toby jug. Second, the essay explores the Toby jug as a metaphor for human subjectivity, with emphasis on a British national subject. The essay argues that the Toby jug is an especially powerful emblem for a consumer culture marked by deep paradoxes. Next, the jug is considered in comparison to the rise of idiosyncratic characters like Laurence Sterne’s Uncle Toby, from whom it might seem to take its name. The essay concludes with a reflection on Martin Heidegger’s essay on the jug. This essay models the application of new materialist methodologies in an attempt to extend the concerns of material culture practice.