American Toby Jug Museum 

Mad Hatter character jug produced by Roy Kirkham Pottery of Tunstall, England, circa 1988. A character from Lewis Carroll's classic "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", the Mad Hatter meets Alice at his tea party. "Mad as a hatter" was a common phrase in the mid-nineteenth century when the book was written and was a statement of fact, for hatters actually did go mad. A chemical, mercurous nitrate, used in the production of felt hats caused a condition known as St. Vitus Dance, an involuntary spasm of the face and arms, which led folk to proclaim sufferers of the condition as being mad. The fictional Mad Hatter may have been based on the furniture dealer, Theophilus Carter, who was called the Mad Hatter because he wore a top hat and had eccentric ideas. Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter is also obsessed with time. His peculiar watch tells the day of the month and not, as Alice observes, "what o'clock it is." Since he quarreled with time last March, the Mad Hatter remarks, it has constantly been six o'clock-teatime.