Little Cream Jug

We came across this little cream jug while cleaning out a closet this summer and I've finally got around to researching it.  We are not sure which side of my family it came from but I've found it dates to around the 1930's or 40's.

 With a picture of a clipper ship, the bottom says Gray Pottery Hanley England.  Albert Edward Gray started a factory in England that was at its height in the 1930's but continued producing pottery ware right up until the 60's. The faint green stamp underneath the bright yellow maker's mark with the clipper ship was quite common and indicates the jug itself was made by another company and then Gray Pottery did the hand painting as decoration.  The design is like one I've found online called leaves and grapes but not exactly. With each jug being hand painted however, there would be variation I suppose.

The type of pottery is called copper lusterware and this website gives a helpful description of the way some of the unique copper-like design was created using a resist method.  

This one above from the Etsy website is the closest I could find in decoration but the shape and handle are different.  

This one from picclick is the same shape as ours but a slightly different design, without the green grapes part of the design. 

The Gray Pottery site shows this one with the pink flower along with several others on a slide show of pottery that came from the factory at Stoke-on-Trent, England. 

It's a cute little piece that is less than 6 centimeters tall so its practical uses are limited.  It has found a place on a shelf in my house however!

Simms to Simms 1930

This Bill of Sale from January 1930, details the transaction of all his possessions from my paternal grandfather, Alex Simms to his wife Mary for the sum of one dollar.  No one knows what led up to this transfer but I assume Alex owed someone money and his possessions were at risk of being taken to pay the loan.  By transferring these goods, chattels and effects to his wife, he kept them from the creditors until times improved.  The circumstances don't really matter but the list of property owned by my grandparents in 1930 is fascinating!   It has been a bit of a struggle to make out the handwriting and figure out what each item was and what its contribution to farming in the early days on the prairie was. The pictures were found on Google searches and may not be right!  Please let me know.

  

• our bay gelding star on forehead
• our chestnut gelding stripes on face
• our bay team of horses, 2 bay mares stripes on forehead 
• our gray gelding, our gray mare, our piebald gelding 
• our bay gelding star on forehead, 1 gray gelding, our brown mare
• 10 milk cows, 4 heifers two years old, 9 yearling calves 
• seven pigs, 100 hens
•  J I Case 15-27 engine, 
  
• our Deering Binder, 
• our Massey Harris Binder, 
  
• our Deering Mower, 
  
• our 22 disc drill, 
  
• 2 John Deere plows, 
  
• Our Great West Plow, 
• Our set 6 furrow harrow, 
• Our Massey cultivator, 
• 1 Roers Cultivator, 
  
• 3 high wagons, one truck wagon, 
• 3 racks, 2 sets of sleighs, 1 wagon box, 
• 4 hp engine, 
• our crusher, 
• 1 fanning mill.
  
   
• Ford Car 1918 model, 
  
• our democrat,
  
   
• several sets of Harness,
•  a quantity of feed and  ? ,
•  all General Household furniture

It is certainly an interesting document from the past and I learned a lot about farming 86 years ago from writing this blog post!