This jug shaped as Mr Punch sitting cosily with his dog Toby, presents a far more benevolent image of him than the wife-beating bully we know from his Punch and Judy shows, but many representations of Punch over the years have come to show him as a more avuncular figure than the criminal of his youth.

Punch was first recorded in England in 1662 by Samuel Pepys when he saw him as a marionette, operated in Covent Garden by the Italian puppet showman Signor Bologna. Pulchinella, as he was then called, was presented in a tent, rather than booth we know today. Punch changed over the years from marionette to glove puppet. Until the late 18th century, when he settled into his own play, he was used as a character in various plays, but his personality and appearance remained much the same. He was always an anarchist, flouting authority, and became one of the nation's best-loved bad-tempered brutes, with a big nose, hump back and corpulent stomach. He is holding his stick with which he beats everyone, including his wife, his baby and the policeman. Punch did not adopt the stick until the late 1700s when he became a glove puppet, making the manipulation of objects much easier for the operator.