Toby Jug of Shylock holding his contract

Toby jug depicting Shylock from Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice. It was manufactured by the English pottery company, SylvaC, which was in operation from 1894 until 1982. Toby jugs were first made in the mid-18th century and are ceramic pitchers modeled on full-bodied representations of popular characters. Shylock has a large nose, fleshy lips, thick eyebrows, hooded eyes, and a beard; all stereotypical physical features attributed to Jewish men. Jews were expelled from England in 1290, making it unlikely that Shakespeare ever met a Jewish person, and he likely based Shylock on long standing antisemitic stereotypes. In the play, Shylock is a Jewish moneylender who demands a pound of flesh as recompense from a merchant who failed to repay a loan. Although some scenes make him a sympathetic character, and show how society and his Christian enemies cruelly mistreat him, in the end, he is punished and forced to convert to Christianity. The play was extremely popular in Nazi Germany, with fifty productions between 1933 and 1939. The Ministry of Propaganda created edited versions of the play that removed scenes and lines that evoked sympathy for Shylock or Jews. The Nazis used Shylock to promote Jewish inferiority by making him emblematic of the Jewish race’s perceived wickedness. These versions ignored the ambiguity Shylock was originally infused with, and portrayed him as an avaricious and vengeful character that was grotesque and inhuman. Despite the stereotypical and anti-Jewish elements, the play remains popular and continues to spark debates over whether it should be considered antisemitic. This pitcher is one of more than 900 items in the Katz Ehrenthal Collection of antisemitic artifacts and visual materials.