American Toby Jug Museum 

Tom Sawyer character jug prototype modeled by Shane Ridge and produced by Royal Doulton of Burslem, England, as the 2003 Royal Doulton International Collectors Club release. Tom Sawyer is the mischievous hero of Mark Twain's novel, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer". Published in 1876, the book remains one of the most popular and famous works of American literature. The novel, which tells of the escapades of a young boy and his friends in St. Petersburg, Missouri, a village near the Mississippi River, recalls Twain's own childhood in a small Missouri town. The friendship of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn is one of the most celebrated in American literature, built on imaginative adventures, shared superstitions and loyalty that rises above social convention. The novel and its characters have achieved folk hero status in the American popular imagination. Scenes such as Tom Sawyer tricking his friends into whitewashing Aunt Polly's fence for him, Injun Joe leaping through the window of the courthouse after Tom names him as Dr. Robinson's murderer, and Tom and Becky lost in the cave have become so familiar to American readers that one almost does not have to read the book to know about them. A picket fence and paint brush form the handle of this jug.