baluster and on spreading foot, one side chased after the painting 'Bolton Abbey in the Olden Times' by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer depicting a medieval tableau of the priory gatehouse at Bolton Abbey with an abbot and monk receiving gifts of game from a forester and two assistants, all in high relief, the other side engraved with an inscription within chased foliage scrolls, with branch and foliage cast ivory-insulated handle

28.5cm high, gross weight 36oz 6dwt, 1,129gr

The inscription reads 'To Amos Ingham Esq MD in Remembrance of True Friendship and the Good Professional Services Rendered to Her Father the Late Rich'd Shackleton Butterfield Esq JP DL During Many Years and with Best Wishes of the Viscountess Montauban, Woodlands May 15 1873'.

Richard Shackleton Butterfield, along with his brothers, was a successful mill owner with transatlantic ambitions, having opened offices in Philadelphia and later New York. Sadly his desire to build a family fortune was to leave him with a reputation as a cruel man. Having purchased Bridgehouse Mill and Woodlands house in Haworth Butterfield was to demand long working hours from his staff and require them to work two loops simultaneously. This was something of a common practice at the mills in Haworth and a practice which was to attract the attention of the government, after a significant lobbying effort by Patrick Brontë, father of Charlotte. This resulted in the sending of Benjamin Herschel Babbage to Haworth in 1849 to make an inspection. His report led to significant improvements, though Butterfield was not pleased and continued to oppose any changes to improve the lot of his workers. This resulted in a strike in 1852 which Butterfield tried to quash by having the ringleaders arrested and brought to court. The proceedings didn't go in his favour and so he was forced to back down and the men were freed.

It would seem that both Patrick and Charlotte Brontë were pleased with this outcome with Charlotte noting in a letter to her father ".... I cannot help enjoying Mr Butterfield's defeat - and yet in one sense this a bad state of things - calculated to make working people both discontented and insubordinate." (M. Smith, Editor, Charlotte Brontë, Selected Letters, 2010, p. 204).

Dr Amos Ingham (1827-1889) was a Haworth surgeon from 1852 and, besides administering to Richard Shackleton Butterworth saw to Charlotte Brontë in February and March 1855 during her last illness and signed her death certificate. A portrait of him is in the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

The original version of Bolton Abbey in the Olden Times remains in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, having been painted by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer in 1834. The image must have been immediately popular as by 1836 Samuel Cousins produced an engraving of the original which was to be widely circulated with examples in the Victoria and Albert Museum (E.277-1970) and in the Royal Collection (RCIN 815137), to name but two. The image was also copied in oil such as an example in the Mercer Art gallery and another at the Beacon Museum in Whitehaven. While making prints or copies after an original painting was relatively commonplace in the 19th century it was more unusual for the same to happen with the decorative arts. The image chased on the present jug is immediately recognisable as being after Landseer, as is the painting on the Victorian papier-mâché cake plate illustrated above.

With non-transferable standard ivory exemption declaration number 56WBCGNS.