American Toby Jug Museum 

Artful Dodger character jug produced by Artone Pottery of Burslem, England, circa 1985. Jack Dawkins, otherwise known as the Artful Dodger, is a character from Charles Dickens' novel "Oliver Twist". Dickens describes Dodger as a "snub-nosed, flat-browed, and common-faced boy, and as dirty as one would wish to see! But he had about him all the airs and manners of a man." A key member of a street gang run by the disreputable Fagin, who has trained boys to become thieves and pickpockets, the Dodger discovers Oliver Twist on the streets of London. He takes him to Fagin's den in the slums where Oliver is enlisted in the street gang and innocently becomes one of Fagin's boys. When Oliver is sent out with the Artful Dodger and another boy on a pickpocket expedition, Oliver is so shocked at the mission that he, and not the two more experienced boys, is caught. A polka-dot handkerchief forms the handle of the jug.