The lustre jug — pottery decorated with a metallic sheen achieved by firing metallic oxides onto the glaze surface — appears in poems about Staffordshire and Sunderland craft as an emblem of domestic prosperity achieved through industrial means; A poem about a Victorian kitchen dresser might describe the lustre jug at its centre: "the copper gleam catching the afternoon light, the inscription around the belly — a toast, a name, a year, still legible"; Sunderland lustre jugs bearing transfer-printed views of the Wearmouth Bridge appear in poems about the Tyne and Wear's industrial landscape — iron and clay, the bridge and the jug; In a poem about a sailor's homecoming, the lustre jug might hold the wine or beer drunk in celebration: "brought down from the shelf for the first time in months, its copper face no dimmer for the waiting"; The process of lustre-making — volatile, dependent on the kiln's atmosphere — gives poets an image of beauty that depends on conditions it cannot control; A contemporary poem about a grandmother's kitchen might describe the lustre jug as the room's presiding object: "we were not allowed to touch it, but we were allowed to look — the copper moving across its surface as if still being made."