The Piggy Bank

1. The Piggy Bank By Adam Stanczak

2. Dogs bury bones. Squirrels gather nuts to last through the winter. Camels store food and water so they can travel many days across deserts. But do pigs save anything? No! Pigs do not save anything. They bury nothing and they store nothing. So why do we save our coins in a piggy bank? The answer: Because somebody made a mistake. During the middle ages, in about the fifteenth century, metal was expensive and seldom used for household wares. Instead, dishes and pots were made of economical clay called pygg.

3. #1 Whenever housewives could save an extra coin they dropped it into their clay jars. They called this their pygg bank or pyggy bank. Over the next two hundred to three hundred years, people forgot that “pygg” referred to the earthenware material. In the nineteenth century when England potters received requests for pyggy banks they produced banks shaped like pigs. Of course, the pigs appealed to the customers and delighted the children.

4. #2 During the middle ages dishes and pots were made of clay called pygg. When the first pyggy bank was made by Henry K. Madison completely accidentally, people started wanting it. The company that Henry was working for had no idea that anything like the pyggy bank would ever exist so it was a surprise to everyone when it was invented. In Toronto, Canada Henry was a typical pot maker. When he made a clay pot shaped as a pig with a little hole in the top he was amazed and thought of it somewhat as a bank, and that’s how the pyggy bank got its name and worldwide fame.