Description
The pottery figure of the squirrel is well-modeled and intensely decorated in Prattware colors. The pet squirrel featured sitting on a green mound as the base while eating a nut held between the front paws.
Squirrels were sometimes adopted as domestic pets; hence the collar and chain featured on the pottery piece.
Jane Loudon, writing in Domestic Pets: Their Habits and Management, noted that squirrels were best kept “in little ornamental kennels, with a platform for the squirrel to sit on, and a little chain to fasten to a collar round the squirrel’s neck.” But pet squirrels were also sometimes allowed to roam free in the house, making use of the furnishings: “[The squirrel] will run up a window curtain, and along the cornice at the top with wonderful grace and agility; it will also run round the cornice of a room, and if it is richly carved, it will peep out between the leaves and flowers in a very amusing manner.”