American Toby Jug Museum 

The Red Queen character jug modeled by William K. Harper and produced by Royal Doulton of Burslem, England, between 1987-1991. This character jug was erroneously named the Red Queen, a character from Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass", but is actually based on the Queen of Hearts from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". This evil queen, who terrifies everyone with her shrill cry, "off with his head," was viewed by her creator as the embodiment of "ungovernable passion-a blind and aimless fury." Her "voice of thunder" and indiscriminate sentences of execution make even the King of Hearts quake and cause the Mad Hatter to tremble so much that "he shook off both his shoes." Despite the frequency of death sentences, few people are actually beheaded, as the King of Hearts quietly pardons many of his subjects when the Queen is not looking, and her soldiers do not carry out her orders. An executioner's axe forms the handle of the jug. In addition to this large jug, a small size (D6859) and a miniature size (D6860) were also produced.