Blacking Pots 19th Century

Took me a little while to find out what this small salt glazed stoneware vessel was.Tapping stoneware drinking or  goblet into google failed to  flash up a twin. It was 'ink' that did it. The excellent Museum of London seems the only site to give this little object its voice and they have done it so brilliantly I can't do better than quote their account 

Mudlarking Find: Blacking Pot

Blacking Pot 1835-1895 (Museum of London) 

' Such pots traditionally contained blacking paste. Blacking ink was widely used in the 19th century for the cleaning and polishing of boots and shoes, floors and doorsteps. The most famous and successful blacking factory in London was Robert Warren's located at 30, the Strand. In the 1830s Warrens' was selling blacking liquid in bottles and blacking paste in pots of three different sizes, priced 6d, 12d and 18d each 'in every town in the Klngdon'. Many firms were set up as rivals to Warren's, attempting to cash in on the success and emulate the 'secret' recipe of the firm. One of these was run by James Lambert at Hungerford Stair who employed the 12 year old Charles Dickens to work in the factory. Dickens never recovered from the humiliation of having been sent to work in the factory due to his father's financial problems. He described his work as 'to cover the pots of paste-blacking;first with a piece of oil paper, and then with a piece of blue paper;to tie them round with a string' and then to clip the paper close and neat, all round, until it looked as smart as a pot of ointment from an apothecary's shop. When a certain number of grosses of pots had attained this pitch of perfection, I was to past on each a printed label; and then go on again with more pots'. (Museum of London)

A Midshipman Blackening his boots 1825 (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)