The Britannia metal mug was manufactured around 1840-50 for use either in home or tavern. Britannia Metal is often mistaken for pewter. As an alloy consisting primarily of tin (around 95-97%) and containing copper and antimony (and no lead), Britannia Metal and modern pewter are virtually indistinguishable.

Much of the distinction between the two lies in the way they were produced. Pewter has always been most commonly cast in moulds. Britannia metal developed in Sheffield, a town with no established history of pewter production, in response to the Sheffield Plate industry (silver fused to copper). It borrowed much of the technology, employing die-stamps, rolling mills and fly presses. It could also be spun into shape over chucks and cast if necessary. In effect it was mass-produced pewter. Britannia metal was also manufactured as a base for electroplated wares. It was first developed by James Vickers in around 1790.

By the 1850s, the use of Britannia metal superseded pewter for cheap mass-produced items. In the 1886 novel Patience Wins (Blackie & Son Ltd, London, Glasgow and Dublin, 1886) George Manville Fenn describes how the hero comes across a Britannia Metal factory: "As I looked through into these works, one man was busy with sheets of rolled-out Britannia metal, thrusting them beneath a stamping press, and at every clang with which this came down a piece of metal like a perfectly flat spoon was cut out and fell aside, while at a corresponding press another man was holding a sheet, and as close as possible out of this he was stamping out flat forks, which, like the spoons, were borne to other presses with dies, and as the flat spoon or fork was thrust in it received a tremendous blow, which shaped the bowl and curved the handle, while men at vices and benches finished them off with files. ... in spite of the metal being cold, the heat of the friction, the speed at which it goes, and the ductility of the metal make it behave as if it were so much clay or putty."