The Curious Case of the Antique Commode

Here's one of the pieces that came in from the Spokane wheat farm's homestead heritage (although I think they must have sold a few crops before acquiring this one :^)

a round commode disguised as a "library stool"...

...complete with retractable step:

It's been hard finding a comparison, although the top half of the commode looks very much like this piece from "1818", a UK auction house:

So, I'm thinking, the bottom 10 inches with the step stool was an upgrade.

Another puzzle is the actual chamber pot that sits in the commode. The pot fits just right in the commode, and its glaze is aged and crackled (I couldn't find my way to saying "the glaze is aged and crazed", although I think that is the proper term). But it doesn't seem antiquitous, does it?

A bit of sleuthing finds that the Royal Winton Grimwades mark on the bottom, per http://www.thepotteries.org/mark/g/grimwades.html, dates from 1934 to 1950:

So, we have the curious case of a Victorian commode that was retrofitted with a new chamber pot in the mid-1900's.

I hope to show you more of the wheat farm treasures soon, but it is late. Time, perhaps, to retire to the Sherlock Holmes smoking chair, not to smoke, but to sip tea and ponder. Luckily, exactly such a chair was included in the Spokane Connection's delivery. You can just see the old fellow brooding away in such a chair, can't you?