Whiskey by the Jug

 

QUESTION: Recently, while browsing the tables of a local flea market, I discovered a cute little porcelain jug with the name “Old Maryland 1881...St. Louis, Mo.” Stamped on the bottom was the mark “K.T.K./CHINA.” Can you tell me what company made this and what would the jug have contained?

ANSWER: Little ceramic jugs like this usually held whiskey. They were a gimmick used by distillers to promote their liquors. The firm of Knowles, Taylor & Knowles Company of East Liverpool, Ohio, made many of them and their “K.T.K./CHINA” mark the bottom of many of them.

From the early 17th century, people drank liquor regularly. And there were always people who viewed it as evil and sought to prevent its use, usually by taxation. In 1753, the legislature of the Colony of New York established an excise tax. By the 1850s, at least 13 states had enacted some type of prohibition laws against the use of liquor, yet by the Civil War, most of these laws had either been repealed or declared unconstitutional.

The Civil War Excise Law of 1862, which established a license for "retail dealers in liquors," originally exempted pharmacists. Two years later, Congress amended the law to apply a $1.50 per gallon tax on all distilled spirits that also applied to pharmacists. But in 1870, Congress again amended the law permitting pharmacists to dispense alcohol for "medicinal purposes.”

There are some Knowles, Taylor & Knowles china whiskey jugs that have the words "expressly for medicinal use" imprinted on them. An ad in the Daily Crisis of East Liverpool, Ohio, on September 10, 1892, stated, “Cholera, the best and finest prevention of this dread disease is to use a few drops of Diamond Club Pure Rye in every drink of water." The distiller declared this whiskey to be “officially recognized by the medical profession in every part of the United States as the purest on the market and is used extensively of medicinal purposes, in kidney diseases and ailments of a like character. It is acknowledged to be unequaled as a bracer and appetizer and as a rejuvenator of a debilitated system." Not only did liquor distributors continue selling their products, they also found a way to avoid paying the excise tax. 

The firm of Knowles, Taylor & Knowles Company began operations in 1870, when Isaac Knowles, Colonel John N. Taylor (Isaac’s son-in-law), and Isaac's son Homer formed a partnership.. By the early 1890s, the firm had mastered the making of bone china called Lotus Ware. 

The china whiskey jugs produced by the firm were bulbous and tapered to a slender neck, decorated with gold trimming. The top of the applied handle, also decorated with gold, had the look of a serpents head, a novel way for the jug to stand out from other whiskey jugs.

The mass-produced jugs came in several colors with transfer designs. Green seemed to be the most widely used color, but sometimes the same style jug appeared in red, blue, and brown.

Jugs also came in different sizes, the most common being the quart size, but there were also pints and half pints. Most jugs had one handle but some had two.

The sharp and artistic transfer designs on the jugs showed off the talent of the artists and the innovative ideas of the firm. The fancy lettering on the jugs may have inspired collectors to keep the jugs as decorative pieces, instead of discarding them as just another container.

George W. Meredith of East Liverpool, Ohio, a former employee of Knowles, Taylor & Knowles Company, fast became a leader in the distribution of his product called "Diamond Club Pure Rye Whiskey." At his peak, he distributed his whiskey from coast to coast. Meredith, who was always looking for new ways to sell his whiskey, and his association with the firm of Knowles,Taylor & Knowles Company, probably had a lot to do with the production of the unique china whiskey jug.

An aggressive advertiser of his "Diamond Club Pure Rye Whiskey ," Meredith was the only distributor known to use the pint and half-pint containers. He also had a 154-inch size, known at the time as a "watch fob." Though it didn’t contain any whiskey, it was a consistent reminder to its possessor of the G.M. Meredith Company.

During this same period, American liquor distributors were also looking for ways to sell  their products, and on special occasions, to provide a gift to their best customers. The fancy liquor containers, inexpensive to purchase, were the perfect solution. The Irish, British and Scottish distributors of the same era had been using fancy jugs to promote their whiskey and had been very successful in thwarting thefts.

Knowles, Taylor & Knowles Co. also produced hand-painted china whiskey jugs. Companies or individuals not in the liquor business purchased these jugs for special occasions. The hand-painted jugs were interesting in themselves, as they showed the Victorian influence. Some had Victorian ladies painted on them surrounded by silver overlay. The scenes often depict flowers, from single roses to bunches of flowers with leaves and stems.

Though Knowles, Taylor & Knowles made jugs with transfer designs, their hand-painted jugs aren’t as easily recognized. The firm didn’t mark its jugs, whether hand-painted or not, any differently. During the Victorian era and into the 20th century, it was popular to buy undecorated items and paint them for business or gifts. Often a professional artists decorated the piece, so the decoration itself cannot offer a clue as to whether or not a piece had been decorated at the factory. Also, most of the factory pieces weren’t signed because the artist worked by the piece and too much time would have been wasted by signing and dating items. However, amateur artists did like to sign their pieces. Most hand-painted items found today that are signed and dated probably fall into that category.

Knowles, Taylor & Knowles produced their china whiskey jugs from 1891 to the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, when bankruptcy forced the company to close.

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Ashes to China, Bones to Beauty

QUESTION: I have a beautiful vase that’s been in my family for years. It seems to be made of delicate porcelain and is decorated with a fish-net type of design that’s raised off its surface. The vase has a green circle with a crown on top and Lotus Ware printed around the outside. Inside are the initials K.T.K. Co. with a crescent and star. Can you tell me more about this piece?

ANSWER: What you have is a piece of Lotus Ware, a short-lived but highly prized type of bone china made by Knowles, Taylor & Knowles of East Liverpool, Ohio. Produced for only a few years in the 1890s, many collectors consider it to be the finest bone china ever made in the United States. The term "Lotus" comes from the translucent pearliness of the glaze, which Isaac Knowles had once observed resembled the glowing sheen of a lotus blossom.

Lotus Ware was a dream of Isaac Knowles. His firm, founded in the 1850s and lasting until the 1930s, consisted of Isaac Knowles, Col. John Taylor, his son-in-law, and his son, Homer Knowles. Isaac Knowles wanted to produce fine bone china that would rival the best imported from England. He had been a longtime producer of Rockingham pottery, yellow Queensware, and ceramic canning jars. So in 1870 he decided it was time for a change and brought his son and son-in-law into the firm. Within 10 years, Knowles, Taylor, & Knowles was not only the largest pottery in East Liverpool, but did all its decorating in-house. .

What is bone china? Literally, it’s fine china ware made from bone ash, which results from burning animal bones that are crushed into a fine white powder. English porcelain makers discovered this combination of ingredients about 1750. Strong hard porcelain chips fairly easily and unless specially treated, is usually tinged with blue or gray. Bone china, on the other hand, is strong, doesn’t chip easily and has an ivory-white appearance, perfect for fine china. The bone ash greatly increases the translucence and whiteness of the porcelain. And though it costs less to make it than porcelain, makers charge a premium for it.

Fortunately, East Liverpool had a stockyard that could supply the needed bones to make the ash. This probably had a lot to do with the decision of Knowles, Taylor, and Knowles to make bone china. And even though the company did well, Isaac Knowles had a vision to create something rare and beautiful—art in porcelain.

Trucks hauled in large quantities of bones from the slaughterhouses and dumped into them into large vats to boil away any meat. Workers dried the remains in kilns, which burned the bones to a powdery ash. They then mixed the powdery ash and the porcelain formula together to form the porcelain composition.

After first casting bases, bowls and other items in the casting shop, workers took the bisque ware to the kilns to be fired for the first time.

After the firing took place, workers transferred the pieces to the decorating shop to be decorated partially or totally by hand. There skilled artists gilded the ware or applied hand-painted designs. Once decorated, workers transported the ware to the kiln room to be fired again to make the design permanent. After cooling, they finally transferred the pieces to the warehouse for shipment.

Knowles employed a type of decorating unique to Lotus Ware which placed flowers, leaves, stems and filigree—open works of elaborate designs—on the pieces of china. The person responsible for this was Heinrich Schmidt, a German artist who had previously worked at the Meissen factory in German. He was a bit of an eccentric and saw himself as an artist, keeping the recipe to make the clay slip he used in his head. He also insisted on working in a room without windows in order to foil pottery industry spies.

Schmidt originated his own floral decorations and open work designs. When he was ready to put his clay flowers on a Lotus bowl, he would first center the bowl on a whirler and then trace out his particular pattern on the bowl with a undulating movement, much like one would trace an imaginary lead pencil around the bowl. His instruments were a rubber bag and copper tube similar to that used in cake decorating. He produced the stems, leaves and flowers of his patterns with remarkable skill, using a small piece of plaster of Paris, a little bit thicker than a lead pencil and shaped like a petal, to give a more realistic impression to his flowers. This was always done after the petals had reached the proper hardness. He sometimes indented the stems of his floral designs, and attached leaves to them, using a sharp tool to give a roughened and more natural effect.

Schmidt first worked out his patterns on a small plaster mold. He would do a quick penciling of his design on the mold and then etch it out slowly with his cornucopia bag. These minute indentations served to support the moist clay while the clay was drying. When the drying process was complete, the open work would be removed from the mold by a slight jolt on the plaster form fro the hand.

He would next take the open work designs into his hand and apply a little fresh slip to its outer edges. Then he would attach the design to the vase or bowl he was working on. If too much pressure was applied, the pattern would be crushed and rendered useless.

Another method Schmidt used, called `jeweling," featured a jewel and swag type decorative chain placed on the item of Lotus Ware making it appear as if the jewel and chain had been hung on the piece. The "fishnet" design was also commonly used on many pieces of Lotus Ware along with the molded patterns of shells and lily pads.

The bodies of Lotus Ware pieces are translucent and fragile with a gloss or matt finish in white or in a light and deep olive green color Most of the Lotus Ware decorating reflects the Art Nouveau influence of the era, with its flowing styles and applied decorations.

Discovering who decorated a piece of Lotus Ware has always been a challenge, even for the most knowledgeable collector. Unless a piece has been signed and the artist is known to have worked at the firm at that time of the decorating and signing, it’s mostly speculation as to who did the decorating. Since the company paid artists by the piece and not by the hour, it’s probably certain that they didn’t mark the pieces they decorated.

Only two marks are known to exist on Lotus Ware. The first shows a circle with a crown on top and the words “Lotus Ware” printed around the outside. The initials K.T.K. Co. with a crescent and star are inside the circle. The second is similar but with the words Knowles, Taylor & Knowles spelled out.

Today, only about 5,000 pieces of Lotus Ware survive.