Unsure whether or not to risk laying out Can$45, a call had been placed to the Elsecar Heritage Centre, South Yorkshire where Alan Blakeman of BBR (10% buyer’s premium) had been able to give the good news.
Mr Blakeman had heard of only one jug for this local brewery and that was a smaller and cracked example with an orange rather than a green body sold at a Birmingham sale organised by CAMRA earlier this year. It had made around £600 so BBR were confident of getting £700-1000 for this 6in (15cm) high jug in good condition save some staining to the interior.
At the November 9 sale of Breweriana & Pub Jugs, it was brought by a UK collector at £2500, the second highest price the specialist auctioneers have posted for a beer jug next to the £3500 paid for a Doulton Barnsley Brewery jug 18 months ago.
The same buyer also won the Dewar’s Whisky stoneware bottle optic with Art Nouveau styliing pictured right. Measuring 6in (15cm) long with its chromed metal tap – and almost certainly a Doulton piece – this rarity had been recently purchased at a London market.
It no doubt represented a nice return when it doubled hopes at £900.
Knotty Ash Ale – a £2500 tipple
RARE pub jugs have a habit of turing up in unusual places. The previously unrecorded Knotty Ash Ales jug, right, made in the latter years of the 19th century for Joseph Jones & Co., had been spotted in a thrift shop in British Columbia earlier this year.
