American Toby Jug Museum 

Professor Moriarty tiny character jug modeled by William K. Harper and produced by Royal Doulton of Burslem, England, in a 1995 limited edition of 2,500 for Lawleys By Post. Professor Moriarty is the best-known antagonist and devious nemesis of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's well loved hero, Sherlock Holmes. Moriarty was the evil genius behind a criminal organization that controlled much of Britain's underworld. Widely considered to be the first true example of a super villain, he is described by Holmes as the Napoleon of Crime. An extremely intelligent man, Moriarty was a professor of mathematics, who wrote a treatise on the binomial theorem. He left his university chair to become a consulting detective and then a consulting criminal. When Holmes disrupted his criminal activities, Moriarty pursued the detective across Europe to the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, where the two fought and Moriarty fell to his death (perhaps). The model for Doyle's Professor Moriarty was Adam Worth (1844-1902), who was one of the greatest thieves of the Victorian era. The London police never managed to convict him of a major crime until he was nearly fifty years of age. A pistol and book form the handle of the jug.