If you ask for back stories to these squibs, you could bring out long accounts about how pottery relates to the sweep of politics: how anti-Prussian majolica makers in 1880s France would attach figurines of rats beside a Prussian helmet on an inkwell ($7,875 at Charles L. Washburne Antiques), or how ... British potters in Liverpool treasonously inscribed pro-American slogans on 1810s pitchers for the lucrative export trade ($2,000 to $6,000 at William R. and Teresa F. Kurau).