Sarreguemines Sandstone Tobacco Pot

Elegant tobacco pot with popular Flemish motif. This is the cream-colored matt fine stoneware version of a model also made in stoneware-bronze and majolica.
Listed in the manufacture's catalog under n ° 47, it was withdrawn in 1899.
It can be dated by the mark under the pot, which represents an eagle n eagle, head to the right, on a cartouche with an oak and laurel wreath, used circa 1865-1870.
The body of the tobacco pot, slightly concave, is decorated with molded figures in bas-relief. It depicts successively: a musician mounted on a barrel playing a musette, in front of him a violinist, further on a couple dancing in front of the village assembly. Men pictured from behind are in great discussion. Three men surround a seated woman who is carrying a goblet in her hand. Another woman tries to get a drunken man sitting on the ground up. In the background of these scenes is a curtain of trees whose foliage forms a continuous frieze under the neck of the pot. The lid is surmounted by a young man playing the bagpipe, leaning against a hollowed out tree trunk forming the receptacle intended to receive the pipe.
Source: Sarreguemines Earthenware Museum.