This jug has been relief moulded; a mass-production technique which involved one process, using elaborate plaster moulds, with no extra work required for adding decoration. Such wares could thus be produced in large numbers and were affordable and durable. Jugs, such as this one, were amongst the most widely used utilitarian vessels of the Nineteenth century; decorative as well as practical. Many different firms produced them and hundreds of different designs existed, as the competition to supply the cheap mass market was intense. Often the same design was produced in different sizes.

This 'apostle' jug, in the Gothic style, is one of the most iconic and successful of relief-moulded jug designs and depicts figures in architectural niches. It has an applied registration mark on its base, which tells us that the design was logged at the Design Registry, established in 1839 to protect original work from being copied.