Saved by faithful
Pride of Mexborough... those old Yorkshire piggy banks much used by Methodists of old are now worth a small fortune, writes John Vincent.
John Wesley, evangelist and founder of the Methodist Church, was a great believer in thrift. “Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can,” he used to say. The virtue so highly prized by Wesley could help explain the popularity during the 18th century and beyond of the ceramic money box or piggy bank. Some of the finest British specimens come from Yorkshire... and, almost certainly, Mexborough, the industrial town known in the 19th century for coal mining, quarrying and brickworks but also for its potteries and strong Methodist and Wesleyan beliefs.
The town on the north side of the Don was home to several Methodist and Wesleyan chapels and at least three ceramics factories: Old Pottery, Rock Pottery and James Emery’s Pottery.
One of them almost certainly made the highly collectable money boxes based on a Wesleyan chapel in Bank Street, Mexborough. Each box shows the building flanked by a pair of oversized garlanded cherubs.
Antique English pottery specialist John Howard, who was himself introduced to Methodism as a child by his grandparents in Wales, has tracked down many over the years and nowadays they fetch from £900-£1,850 each. He says positive attribution to a particular pottery was impossible because, infuriatingly, they never have a maker’s mark or Mexborough in the title inscription. One clue, though, is that the chapel stood opposite the Rock Pottery.
“It is a reasonable assumption that they represent the Bank Street Chapel with its stylized windows, doors and distinctive wide chimneys,” Mr Howard says. “Definite proof is elusive but, for me, they will always be Mexborough Wesleyan
Chapel money boxes. The building still exists but is now a fast-food takeaway. How times have changed...”
The boxes – frequently made to commemorate Christenings or births – sometimes bear the words “Wesleyan Chapel” or “Saving Bank” and frequently the names of recipients. One he sold recently was emblazoned: “Maria Barker, Pontefract, 1844”. Others bore legends such as “John Henry Hopkins, 1839”, “Elizabeth Kay, 1850” and “William Lockel”.
Mr Howard is currently offering a 10.5in-high Yorkshire Prattware bust of the Rev John Wesley, who travelled an extraordinary 250,000 miles on horseback and preached 40,000 sermons. By the time he died in 1791, aged 88, he was described as “the best-loved
man in England”. Priced at £1,200, the pottery bust bears an offbeat touch which only adds to its charm: the evangelist’s surname was misspelt and the painter forced into a somewhat clumsy correction.
Finally, an anecdote. When I mentioned that I had owned since childhood a politically incorrect castiron mechanical money box in the form of a caricature black man in a red jacket, known in those days as Jolly Sambo, Mr Howard said he had once taken a ceramic version to a New York antiques fair.
A white woman embarrassed him by loudly condemning his exhibit as racist. Just then, in strolled an elegant black woman, who witnessed the rant, paid Mr Howard the $1,400 asking price for the money box and, turning to the protester, said: “Us black folks now buy what you white folks used to like to buy.”
Then she left with the words: “You may have heard of my husband...Harry Belafonte.”