American Toby Jug Museum 

Lord Kitchener prototype toby jug produced by Mason's of Hanley, England, circa 1975. Lord Horatio Kitchener (1850-1916) is perhaps best known for the famous British military recruitment posters bearing his heavily mustachioed face and pointing hand over the legend, "Your country needs you." As Secretary of State for War at the beginning of World War I, Kitchener organized armies on an unprecedented scale and became a symbol of the national will to win. As commander-in-chief of the Egyptian army in 1898 he crushed the separatist Sudanese forces in the Battle of Omdurman and then occupied the nearby city of Khartoum, where his success saw him ennobled. When World War I broke out, Kitchener, then proconsul of Egypt, was on leave in England and reluctantly accepted an appointment as Secretary of State for War. He rapidly enlisted and trained vast numbers of volunteers for a succession of entirely new "Kitchener armies." A flag pole with the Union Jack forms the handle of the jug. This is one of ten known prototype toby jugs produced by Masons in the mid 1970s but never put into production.