Antique Details

Rare large (11") one of a kind Rockingham milk pitcher signed on base "Bay View pottery South Amboy New Jersey. December 1896". for Capt GL Wicks Bay Ridge NY. With frog in the bottom . I am unaware of another signed piece by this potter. This pitcher has it all. Bay View Pottery operated from 1894 or 95 to 1905. Many of its workers were former Swan Hill potters.FYI  For those of you that did not know there was legitimate reason to put a live frog in your milk pitcher. 

Long before modern refrigeration, people in Russia and Finland reportedly placed living Russian brown frogs in milk to keep it fresh.

It turns out the curious practice has a basis in science: Recent research on the amphibians’ skin secretions led by Moscow State University organic chemist A.T. Lebedev shows they’re loaded with peptides, antimicrobial compounds as potent against Salmonella and Staphylococcus bacteria as prescription antibiotics.