May 7, 2013

Finest Hour 151, Summer 2011

Page 55

Churchilliana – The Potted Special Relationship

What began in 1941 was quickly celebrated by British potteries—and thereby hang several tales.

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By Douglas Hall

An impressive amount has been written about the Churchill-Roosevelt relationship: Warren Kimball’s Forged in War (1997) has a seventeen-page bibliography! British potteries were not slow to mark the event with a flood of commemorative china. Much was produced under wartime restrictions which prohibited elaborate decoration, but these pieces of very nice quality have become quite highly collectible in recent years.

The Mystery Mug

At an auction in Leicestershire I spotted a novel coffee mug in brown salt-glazed stoneware. The caricature portraits on either side were the same as on a white mug I owned, but instead of a large “V,” this one was inscribed “J-Le-S | Oct | 1941” between the portraits. It is backstamped “TG Green & Co Ltd, Church Gresley, England.” A Derbyshire pottery established in 1864, it is still in business, best known for its popular blue and white-banded “Cornish” kitchenware.

The inscription intrigued me. Who was “J-Le-S”? What was being commemorated in October 1941? It was, after all, two months after the Atlantic Charter meeting and well before Pearl Harbor. Churchill was in fact in a funk, thinking America would never join the war.

I had to own this little mug. Unfortunately, another bidder had the same idea, and I had to bid high to secure my prize. I telephoned T.G. Green for help identifying the initials. They could not assist, but did advise that they formerly did a considerable trade in personalised pottery—from complete tableware services to individual pieces—much of it with barges which plied the nearby canals.

Whether “J-Le-S” was a barge person we’ll never know. Did he (or she) order a single mug, or several dozen? What connection was there with Churchill and Roosevelt? Was there any significance to the date October 1941? And is there an American or Canadian connection?

Chambers’ Biographical Dictionary lists one Jean Le Sage, a French-Canadian who became Prime Minister of Quebec in 1960. He would have been 29 in 1941. Was he, like many of his countrymen, in Britain at the time? Did he stop off in Church Gresley and commission a supply of personalized coffee mugs? Perhaps a reader can help throw some light on this “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”