Cocktailphernalia: Work is the Curse of the Drinking Class

THERE WAS A TIME when this ceramic drunkard, with his red nose and black tails, could easily be found at home bars. Him or others like him: cheerful hillbillies in straw hats or hobos with their jackets fallen around their elbows. Unfortunately, this sort of novelty mug tended to belong to the type of a guy who wore plaid jackets, pranked his friends with joy buzzers, and slapped your back when telling the punchline to a particularly bad joke, his laughter literally sounding like this: "HAR de HAR HAR!"

Oscar Wilde, who originated the quote hand-painted on the mug, would have died from shame had cerebral meningitis not taken him a half-century earlier.