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Marmalade jar

Jars Victorian

Found on
6 Dec 2025
Public location
South Bank

Description

Marmalade jar made by Maling, Newcastle. Markings have worn off but statistically, it was marmalade by Keillers of Dundee!

From the wiki:
Maling pottery was produced in the north east of England for just over two centuries. The name of the pottery derives from the French surname of Malin. The family were Protestant Huguenots who fled their native land in the sixteenth century to escape the threat of religious persecution. They settled in England and prospered in a variety of business enterprises including coal, shipping and timber.

When the business moved to Newcastle in 1817 the then owner, Robert Maling (son of Christopher Thompson Maling I), began to mark pieces with his name. It was his son, Christopher Thompson Maling II, who took the business in a new and profitable direction in the 1850s. He devised a way to make pottery containers by machine, rather than by hand. This speeded up the production process and led to huge orders from manufacturers of goods as diverse as marmalade, meat and fish pastes, ointments and printing ink.

A Victorian visitor to the pottery records that he saw an estimated one million jars in storage, waiting to be shipped to a marmalade manufacturer. Given the size of Britain’s territorial ambition in those days, these jars can still be dug up in many parts of the world.


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