...this destructive and poisonous liquid.
John Ireland, Hogarth Illustrated, Vol. II, 1791

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, London gin was both the solace and the damnation of the poor. Known as Mother’s Ruin and Strip-me-naked, it defied several official acts to curb its sale. An Act of Parliament in 1830 to encourage the sale of beer had the unintended effect of increasing the distilling of bootleg gin. That date also marked the advent of appealing, take-home gin bottles made of brown stoneware. The trade lasted from about 1830 to 1856 with the greatest output between 1837 and 1845.

The earliest example in the collection (1) predates the rest by forty years and has its mob-capped profiles separately applied. Beginning around 1830, portrait bottles of political figures (2), theatrical personalities such as American “black face” comedian Thomas Dartmouth Rice (3), and numerous familiar objects from books (6) to pistols (8) were all cast in two-piece molds.