Mason's called this pattern Birds of Paradise, though the bird itself is entirely invented, and no ornithologist has ever managed to say which paradise it's meant to be from. The design is textbook chinoiserie: a flowering tree with a mythical bird perched mid-branch, worked in a soft palette of green, blue and yellow against a cream ground. The jar takes a round baluster form with a flat lid, and it's sized generously enough that it clearly wasn't made to sit empty on a shelf.
That's the thing about ginger jars: they were always working objects before they were decorative ones. The form came to Britain via trade with China, where jars like this one held preserved ginger, and English potteries such as Mason's spent the nineteenth century adapting the shape to hold whatever a household needed kept fresh and out of sight, biscuits very much included. This one would still do the job today, whether that's flour, biscuits, or anything else you'd rather keep slightly under wraps.
Condition notes
Great vintage condition. Crazing commensurate with age; small pockmark to glaze from the manufacturing process.
