This type of ring-shaped jug first appeared in Italy in the sixteenth century. It is believed that the container was carried on the arm of the harvester working in the fields. The form must have been rare in nineteenth-century America because it does not appear on any of the pottery price lists.

Related examples: Ketchum 1983, no. 284.

Adapted from: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.