Commemorative jug

This commemorative jug depicts the Distin Family Quintet, an internationally celebrated mid nineteenth-century brass ensemble from London. The portraits are modelled after a famous lithograph of the family by Charles Baugniet made in 1845. Pottery jugs in various sizes depicting the quintet were popular keepsakes. This unusually large and intricately detailed Parian ware jug is a particularly fine example.
The Family Quintet comprised John Distin and his four sons, who initially performed on three natural horns, slide trumpet and trombone. After meeting Adolphe Sax in Paris in 1844 during a concert tour, the quintet adopted Sax's recently invented saxhorns, an innovative family of valved brass instruments that became the backbone of the British brass band. The Distins popularized saxhorns in their native England and the US, both as performers and as makers who built instruments to Sax’s designs, first as agents and later as rivals.