American Toby Jug Museum 

John Bull teapot produced by Staffordshire Fine Ceramics of Tunstall, England, circa 1975. John Bull is the national personification of England popularized by Scottish writer Dr. John Arbuthnot in 1712 in a series of pamphlets advocating the end of the war of the Spanish Succession. These were later republished as the "History of John Bull", portraying him as an honest, jolly, plain-dealing, hot-tempered farmer. By the 1800s, however, "Punch" cartoonist Sir John Tenniel had transformed him into a dignified gentleman. While he is sometimes used to refer to the whole of Britain, he has never been widely accepted in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. As a literary figure, John Bull is well-intentioned, frustrated, full of common sense and entirely of native country stock. Bull is usually portrayed as a stout man in a tailcoat with breeches and a Union Jack waistcoat, wearing a low topper on his head and often accompanied by a bulldog. A tree forms the handle and spout of the teapot.