19th Century English Antique Staffordshire Marbled Slipware Pig Money Box, circa 1840

A small and thoroughly engaging pig money box, modelled standing four-square on stubby legs, with a broad flattened snout, pricked ears and simple pierced eye-holes. The buff earthenware body is decorated with surface slip marbled in burnt orange, treacle brown, slate-blue and cream, sealed beneath a clear glaze. The slips run in loose vertical streaks over the back and flanks, as if the pig had wandered through a tannery. The decoration stops short of the belly and legs, which are left in the pale clay, so the animal seems to stand in its own small pair of breeches. A coin slot is cut along the spine. There is no stopper or withdrawal hole, so this is a true “still bank”: once filled, it could only be emptied by patience with a kitchen knife, or by a hammer.

That last fact explains why so few survive intact. Money boxes of this kind were made in the Staffordshire potteries in the early Victorian period as inexpensive gifts for children. Thrift was urged on the young from pulpit and primer alike, and each box was intended to be broken open on the day the savings were needed. This example is freely hand-formed rather than moulded, and the slip is worked with an easy, unstudied hand. Together these give it a vitality that the later mass-produced Continental copies of the type seldom achieve. The pig itself was an old emblem of plenty and good fortune, and the clay pig as a home for a child’s pennies was familiar across Britain, from the Potteries to the Scottish “pirley pig”. Small, cheerful and entirely of its moment, it makes a lovely object for a nursery shelf, a collector’s cabinet of Staffordshire, or a desk where loose change gathers.

Provenance: England. Mid 19th century.

Material: Buff earthenware with marbled surface slip in orange, brown, slate-blue and cream under a clear glaze; undecorated lower body and feet.

Condition: Good original condition commensurate with age and use. The glaze remains bright, with minor frits and flakes to the extremities consistent with age and handling. No restoration observed. 

Dimensions: Length 3¾ in (9.5 cm); height 2½ in (6.2 cm); width 2 in (5 cm)