A remarkable Anna Pottery stoneware vase sold for $64,350 last week. It has a child’s face on the side, the heads of eagles holding fish as handles, talon feet, and cobalt blue highlights. The pottery was operated from 1859 to 1896 by Cornwall Elihu Kirkpatrick (1814-1890) and Wallace Kirkpatrick (1828-1896) in Anna, Illinois. They made bricks, drain tiles, and sometimes gift wares and strange bottles and figures. Collectors favor the folk art pottery. They had a sense of humor and created bottles shaped like pigs, temperance jugs covered in snakes, frog-shaped ink wells, heads, a popular “little brown jug” for liquor, and other strange figures. The decorations included railroad maps, funny sayings, terrifying people climbing on and into jugs, and other unexpected embellishments. I first saw an Anna pig bottle 30 years ago while doing research for a column and I wanted to have one. But they have always been expensive and there was no easy way to locate them. At the time, there was no general listing or the Internet. Cornwall made this special vase, which was sold by Jeffrey S. Evans in June, for his daughter, Amy (1862-1935). It was not a record price for Anna pottery—a snake jug brought the highest price for the pottery, selling for $87,400. The highest priced Anna pottery pig was $35,650. I’ll add it to my list of dream antiques, things I want but I will never own.