The Cream of the Crop

QUESTION: Last year I went antiquing in the English Cotswolds. In nearly every shop I went into, I saw at least one or more little cow creamers waiting for new homes. How did these little ceramic accessories come about and why did they choose to make them in the shape of a cow?

ANSWER: Originally made in England, then in Scotland and America, these unique creamers were the pride and joy of many late 18th and early 19th-century English housewives, both rich and poor. They kept these spotted bovines sitting on top of their dining room dressers, ready to use on special occasions.

These pottery cow creamers are little jugs standing firm on all four legs. They’re  usually about six inches long and four to five inches high. Housewives would pour fresh cream through a hole in the cow’s back, then seal up the whole with a cover. Unfortunately, many a cow creamer today is missing its cover. The cow’s curved tail served as the handle while its mouth served as the spout.

Cow creamers are among the oldest forms of decorative tableware still in existence today. Their ancestry can be traced back  to a decorative European jug used for washing the hands before and during a meal called an “aquamanile.” These jugs were very fancy and often doubled as a centerpiece. Ironically, an aquamanile had many of the same features as a cow creamer—a body in the shape of an animal standing square on its legs, a tail arched to meet its back that served as a handle, a hole in its back by which the jug could be filled, and a gaping mouth from which to pour the water.

Made from gold, silver, bronze, or pewter, the aquamaniles were most commonly shaped like lions, sometimes encrusted with precious stones.

It was the Dutch that chose the cow as the shape for the cow creamer which became a luxury accessory.

During the 18th century, coffee drinking became popular among the social elite of Europe. The new coffee ritual demanded novelty jugs to hold the cream. Those depicting a cow with a bee perched on its back were the most popular.

Initially, silversmiths created cow creamers in different sizes but using the same freestanding cow. There were all sorts of whimsical variations—some had garlands around their necks, hinged lids, or handles shaped like flies, bees, or flowers. But when the Dutch began making the creamers in tin-glazed Delftware, the fencegates opened and a whole herd of creamers rushed out.

The first cow creamer came from the Whieldon Pottery, which imitated the silver cow jugs made in 1755 by John Schuppe. The most well-known of these had a mottled brown tortoise shell-type glaze. Others had brown and yellow spots, black with a criscrossed yellow pattern, and even light blue with yellow circles.

But the clay was more difficult to control and sculpt than metal, so the potters introduced a few changes to the design to make it conform more to the different material. While a silver cow could stand directly on its legs, a pottery cow could not. This necessitated the addition of a base to help stabilize and strengthen the clay.

It seems every potter added his touch of whimsy. In fact, there are almost as many different decorations as there are creamers.

 potters also crafted these unique little jugs, essentially copying from the earlier Whieldon design. None of these have markings on the bottom. The Welsh potters added their own creative touches to their cow creamers. Many decorated them freehand or applied transfer designs of rustic farm scenes. After 1850, the Scots developed a love affair with the cow creamer. Scottish potters experimented with sponged decoration and brightly colored glazes.

After the American Revolution and into the early 19th century, imported English pottery became too expensive, so the United States Pottery in Bennington, Vermont, began making its own version of the cow creamer. Each cow had crescent-shaped nostrils, open eyes, folds in the neck, and visible ribs. I guess the American cows weren’t as well fed as their English, Scottish, and Welsh cousins. After Bennington closed in 1858, its potters sought work at potteries in Ohio, Maryland, and New Jersey, taking their skill at making cow creamers with them.

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Tiny Collectibles from World War II

QUESTION: I love to go to flea markets and root around in the cases of small items that some dealers have on their tables. I never know what I’m going to find. A few months ago, I stumbled upon a bizarre brass pin in the shape of a gas mask with the inscription “Britain Can Take It” cast into it below the mask. Naturally, I had to have it but can’t find anything on it. Do you have any idea what this pin could have been used for and perhaps how old it is? Because of the gas mask design, I’m thinking it’s probably from around World War I.

ANSWER: You happened on a very unique collectible from World War II—a piece of war relief jewelry. Most people have never heard of it, let alone seen one. This particular pin was a fur/dress clip produced around 1940 by Silson for Bundles for Britain.

Jewelry, started in 1937 by Victor and Jack Silberfeld, both Britains, who later changed their last name to Silson and their company name to Silson Inc. of New York, produced two of the most emotionally charged war relief pins---the "Britain Can Take It" gas mask brooch or dress clip and the 'Battle of Britain" bomb fragment pin. Both pins seemed calculated to bring the reality of "the European war" home to the American public. They mainly produced costume jewelry for the American market. Victor was the main designer, but George Stangl and Samuel Rubin also designed pieces for Silson.

Silson manufactured the first pin, shaped like a British gas mask, in both sterling silver and copper-painted pot metal versions. The company made the second pin, sold an behalf of BAAC, of an actual bomb fragment, gilded or painted black, with "Battle of Britain" engraved across the front. Both of these brooches are rare and highly valued by RAF and British home front collectors. Silson made costume jewelry for a little over 10 years.

Jewelry makers like Cartier, Coro, and Accessocraft produced World War II war relief brooches to fill both political and humanitarian needs. Politically, buying and wearing a war relief item showed support for the Roosevelt Administration's anti-isolationist stance. As Hitler's Blitzkreig continued to devastate one European country after another, humanitarian agencies began popping up in the U.S. to help the victims of Nazi aggression. They began by sending money and food through the Red Cross. Soon, refugee children and women’s knitting groups began producing first sea boot liners for British sailors, then sweaters for civilian bombing victims.

Various means, from penny-a-punt contract bridge parties to glittering benefit halls, funded these relief efforts. Many organizations produced "emblems,” made into brooches or attached to compacts, which local chapters and better department stores sold to the public. Depending on the item and the organization, 10 to 90 percent of the purchase price went directly to relief work.

Dealers and collectors often mistake these emblems for European pins, as they incorporate patriotic images from the country they support. The pins can he found in rhinestones and vermeil—gold plate over sterling—as well as brass and enamel. The brooches produced toward the end of the war used cheaper materials and construction methods because brass, silver and gold were necessary for the war effort.

In early 1940, the Allied Relief Fund asked Cartier to design an emblem for them. The company responded with a gold-plated brooch featuring the ram-pant lion of England against an elaborately enameled Union Jack shield, bearing a banner showing the organization's name. When the ARF joined the British War Relief Society in December 1940, Cartier changed the banner on the brooch to reflect this. The Allied Relief Fund version is rare, since they were manufactured for less than a year.

The British War Relief Society and Bundles for Britain were the most successful sellers of war relief jewelry. The British war relief emblem, based loosely on the coat of arms of the British royal family, depicting a rampant lion surrounded by the phrase Dieu et moo Droit (God and My Right) and hacked by bunting. An early use of  the "branding" concept so popular in marketing today, it was reproduced on everything from press releases to playing cards.

Accessocraft made the jewelry, which was sold at benefits, local branch workrooms and Bergdorf Goodman in New York City. The brooches are commonly marked "Official BWRS and BB by Aeeessncraft," BWRS and BB indicating British War Relief Society and Bundles for Britain, respectively. They sold for $l for the small one and $2.75 for the large. Accessocraft also manufactured pins in a number of other designs for these organizations.

War relief pins with the initials of the Royal Air Force were particularly popular with the public and are among the items dealers, and even World War II jewelry experts, most often misidentify. The RAF section of Bundles for Britain commissioned a wing pin from Monet. It is 24k gold-plated and was produced in three varieties. The BWRS had a gold-plated RAF wing pin created by Accessocraft in two sizes. The brooch sometimes he found with a chain to connect it to another pin, a popular design in the 1940s. The


British American Ambulance Corps was perhaps the most prolific of the RAP pin sellers. Coro produced wings for them in two versions—the larger of brass, the smaller of sterling silver—and various color combinations.

One of the BAAC's RAF pins is an enameled roundel pin produced in conjunction with their "Thumbs Up Cavalcade" fund-raising campaign. The roundel is the bull's-eye mark that identifies the nationality of a plane. Neither is marked British American Ambulance and so are commonly misidentified as RAF uniform or sweetheart pins.

Also on behalf of the BAAC, Bloomingdale's sold a set of sterling silver pins shaped like garden tools with the theme "Gather the Tools of Victory." The set cost $1.50, with 10 percent going toward relief work. Today, these tool pins are rarely found as a set and, as was common with many of the war relief items, their identification as such was only indicated on the backing card.

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How About a Game of Bones?

QUESTION: While traveling on a recent trip to Cuba I noticed men playing dominoes on a table in a park. There were several games going. This took me back to my childhood when my grandfather taught me how to play dominoes. We used an ordinary black wooden set that had the image of a dragon pressed into the back. I'm certain the dominoes came from the five and dime store. I also remember drawing face-down dominoes from the so-called bone yard when none of the remaining ones in my hand could be matched with those on the table. The first player to rid himself of all his dominoes by matching them to others on the table was the winner. This, I learned later, was the draw game.  I haven’t played the game in a long time, but I’d like to know a little more about it. How and when did it originate? Are there different forms?

ANSWER: The game of dominoes, or bones, as some like to call it, has been around since the 12th century. Legend says that a Chinese statesman invented the game of dominoes which he presented to the Emperor Hui Tsung in 1120 C.E. and which were circulated abroad by imperial order during the reign of Hui's son, Kao-Tsung seven years later.



During the 18th century, the game reached Venice and Naples. No one knows if a set had been brought back from China or whether an Italian created his own game. The game changed in the translation from Chinese to the European culture. European sets contained seven additional dominoes, with six of these representing the values that resulted from throwing a single die with the other half of the tile left blank, and the seventh domino representing the blank-blank (0–0) combination. By the late 18th century, the game of dominoes had arrived in Britain from France where it became popular in inns and taverns.

The word "domino" probably came from the Latin word dominus, meaning “the master of the house.” This evolved through French, then English to domino. The word “domino” first referred to a type of monk’s hood, then to a black hooded masquerade costume with a white mask worn during the Venetian Carnival, then to the mask itself, and finally to one of the pieces in the domino set, namely the one-on-one tile.

The game moved from Italy to France in the early 18th Century and became a fad. By the late 18th century, France began producing two types of domino puzzles. In the first, a person placed tiles on a given pattern in such a way that the ends matched. In the second type, a person places tiles on a given pattern based on arithmetic sums of the pips, usually totals of lines of tiles and tile halves.

European-style dominoes are rectangular tiles of wood or ivory—thus the nickname bones—that are twice as long as they are wide. Each has a line dividing its face with two square ends. Each end has a number of spots called pips that range from one to six. There’s a single tile for each combination of the faces of a pair of dice. The backs of the dominoes in a set are either blank or had a common design. The domino gaming pieces make up a domino set, sometimes called a deck or pack. The traditional domino set consists of 28 dominoes, featuring all combinations of spot counts between zero and six. A domino set is a generic gaming device, similar to playing cards or dice, in that a variety of games can be played with a set.

Dominoes have traditionally been made of bone or ivory, or a dark hardwood such as ebony, with contrasting black or white pips, either inlaid or painted. Alternatively, domino sets have been made from many different natural materials, including various types of stone, woods; metals, ceramics, or glass .

Tiles are generally named after their two values. Deuce-five or five-deuce are alternative ways of describing the tile with the values two and five. Tiles that have the same value on both ends are called doubles. Players refer to them as double-zero, double-one, etc. Tiles with two different values are called singles.

The most common domino sets commercially available are double six, with 28 tiles, and double nine, with 55 tiles.

It’s amazing how many forms of the game can be played with just 28 dominoes. In addition to the basics like the draw game and the block game, there are games with unusual names like Sebastopol, Bergin, Rounce, Sniff, All Fives, Fives & Threes, and Flower and Scorpion.

While wooden dominoes are the most commonly found, the best ones are made of oblong pieces of ivory, with ebony backs. One hundred years ago, a set of polished bone dominoes in a mahogany box would have cost as much as $4, while ordinary bone dominoes sold for as little as 50 cents.

Dominoes are an affordable collectible. Only the best ebony and bone sets sell for  $100 or so today. Celluloid sets from the 1930s, made by the Elkloid Company of Providence, Rhode Island, sell for around half that. Other sets, tied to special events like world’s fairs, can go for much more. And the more common sets like the one used above sell for very little.

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Fire in a Box

QUESTION: My father recently passed away and left me a number of things, including his collection of matchboxes. No, not the toy cars but the real thing—boxes that hold matches. I believe there are several hundred in the collection. Frankly, I’d like to continue collecting them, but I have no idea where to start. Can you help me? And can you tell me a bit about the history of matchboxes?

ANSWER: When a person, such as yourself, inherits someone else’s collection, they need to decide whether to merely curate the collection, that is take care of it and preserve it, or to make it there own. It sounds like you’d like to make your father’s matchbox collection your own. The first thing you need to do is learn about the history of these unique containers, then you need to find out which types are the most collectible, not necessarily the most valuable.

Matchboxes consist of a sliding-drawer within a sleeve, and since their appearance, they have made possible a variety of graphic designs and artistry.

Before 1844, when Gustraf Eric Pasch invented the safety match, finding a source to light a fire in an emergency was a challenge. He devised a system of impregnating little sticks of pinewood with sulpher and storing them ready for use. At the slightest touch of fire they burst into flame. Formerly called a "light-bringing slave", it later became known as a “fire inch-stick.”

But it was Edvard Lundström who developed Pasch's idea of a safety match and applied for its patent with a phosphor-free tip. Johan's younger brother, Carl Frans Lundström was an entrepreneur and industrialist who helped him set up a safety match factory in Jönköping, Sweden, between 1844 and 1845. They began making matches  in 1853 and won a silver medal for their invention at the World Expo in Paris 1855.
Although expensive to produce, their matches became known throughout the world as Swedish Matches.

Once the manufacturing of safety matches had begun, the Lundström brothers came up with a practical form of packaging that’s still used today—the matchstick box with an inner box and an outer sleeve. They coated the sides of the outer sleeve with a striking surface containing red phosphorus. And they made each box by hand. The designs on Swedish matchboxes dominated the market and soon most of the matchbox labels in the world imitated these designs.

In 1892, Alexander Lagerman invented a machine that revolutionized safety match manufacturing. The

machine dipped matchsticks in sulphur, paraffin and the match head substance. It split them, dried them, then packed them into matchboxes. Everything was automated. When the brothers built their safety match factory in Jönköping, production reached 4,000 boxes a year. By 1896, the firm produced over seven million boxes a year.

In that same year, a brewing company ordered more than 50,000 matchbooks to advertise a new product, thus the practice of matchbook advertising was born. Once they became common, advertisers were eager to use these popular items to get their messages to the public.

Advertisers display a wide variety of both consumer and industrial goods and services using matchbox ads. However, restaurants clearly dominate all other categories of trade. Next in line are probably hotels and motels, yacht and country clubs and other types of membership organizations; industrial firms, retailers and financial institutions. Represented to a lesser extent are food products, liquor, tobacco, tourist attractions, transportation, mostly airlines, real estate, insurance, automobile dealers, sports, public utilities, and governmental agencies.

A matchbox has two trays instead of one. Most feature colorful holographic or 3-D illustrations and other decorative motifs, such as seashells or holiday symbols on their covers. Manufacturers made some matchboxes in sets, commemorating historical events or popular cultural icons, to enhance their retention value. Subjects vary widely, from zoo animals, British royalty, museum pieces, jokes, old ads, classic autos, and scenic points of interest. Holiday Inn issued one of the largest numbers of different collectible matchboxes.

Some matchboxes can be personalized with a loyal customer's name imprinted to reward patronage in restaurants and other businesses. These often have a few blank lines printed on the back so that the user can note names, addresses, phone numbers and notes.

Generally, matchbox sizes range all the way from "micro" at 1 5/8 x 7/8 x 1/4 inches on up to 4 1/2 x 2 1/4 x 1 3/16-inches and some are even larger. The bigger sizes house kitchen, fireplace, pipe and cigar matches. In addition to rectangular, boxes can be square, hexagonal, round, or in odd shapes like miniature barrels.

While manufacturers used plain cardboard for the majority of matchboxes, there are some made of glossy coated cardboard, foil, plastic, and wood.

Besides the United States, collectible matchboxes can also be found in other countries, such as England, Canada, Japan, Australia, Korea, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Sweden, Spain, Ireland, Wales, and France.

Matchboxes are an affordable collectible with many examples selling for mere pennies. There’s also a great deal of variety with over 250 different matchbox categories such as military or hotels. While the U.S. matchbox collectors is facing a diminishing supply because people are quitting smoking or using lighters, the foreign hobby is still going strong. Diligent U.S. collectors can also still find giveaway matchboxes, however.

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The Master of Inks

QUESTION: I recently began to collect old bottles. I found and bought an old blue glass bottle with what looks like a spout at a flea market. Do you happen to know what this might have been used for?

ANSWER: It sounds like you discovered a master ink bottle. Master inks could be found everywhere—at universities, in town halls, in schools, and even at Civil War campsites, to record the horrific events and write letters home to loved ones.  Without masters, much of history wouldn’t have been recorded.

People used master inks to fill smaller ink wells. Many survived because they could be reused. People often threw smaller ink containers away after use. Unfortunately, there’s little information about them available.

Prior to the 18th century, ink came in the form of a cake or powder, which the user would mix with water. It was only in the late 18th century that liquid ink in wide-bottomed bottles became widely available. This was a black or blue-black writing fluid that the user dipped a pen made from a goose quill into a small container. Different makers used a variety of recipes, but the most common types were Gall ink, deep black Indian ink  and blue-black ink. P& J Arnold of London was one of the pioneering companies in the ink industry in Great Britain. Other well known English ink companies included Stephens, Price and Hyde, and Cochrane. In the U.S., Sanford and S.S. Stafford were two of the earlier companies. As the ink industry grew, so did the need for ink containers.

Ink bottles differ from inkwells in that makers designed the bottles to serve a purely utilitarian purpose—to hold ink. Inkwells, on the other hand, were often more decorative, the sort of thing you’d want people to notice on your desk. Consequently, inkwells were more expensive than ink bottles.

No single manufacturer had the monopoly on ink bottles. Indeed, just about any company that produced glass dabbled in ink bottles at one point or another. Generally, manufacturers made master inks of glass, ceramic, or pottery. They came in several varieties , including “pourer” inks, used to top off ink wells, and the bulk type used for filling the inkwells.

Master inks are highly collectible. Their larger size allows collectors to display them more prominently than the smaller inks. They also came in a wide variety of colors, and as with all glassware, color is paramount to collectors. The most valuable colors are unusual ones like yellow and purple, while colors like aqua and clear are more common. Embossed bottles or ones with intact labels also increase an ink bottle’s value.
Signs of wear and color variants affect the quality. Some examples carry the residue of stains that still remain. Collectors usually categorize master inks by makers, countries of origin, and age.

Prices for master inks vary greatly from a few dollars for the more common ones and to hundreds of dollars for some of the rarer ones. Great examples from different ink makers can be found from $50-100.

The Ultimate in Elegance

QUESTION: What can you tell me about this plate? Is it collectible or ready for the dumpster.

ANSWER: If I were dumpster diving, I certainly would take a tumble for your plate. What you have is an authentic, hand-painted plate made in Limoges, France.

French Limoges is the name of delicate porcelain ware made in the Limousin region of France since the 18th century. It includes dinnerware, centerpieces, and the distinctive porcelain snuff and pill boxes that have become valuable collectors' items. The town of Limoges contains numerous factories that produced these wares, and, in fact, still do. The kaolin found in the rich soil in this French region is the vital element in the mix that makes up Limoges porcelain paste and gives it its delicate character.

Your particular type of plate, depending on its size, could be a case plate or a charger. Victorians loved to collect things and during the late 19th century, decorative display cases placed in the dining room, later to be commonly known as “china closets,” held various porcelain wares. Small hand-painted plates, usually from 7-8 inches in diameter, became a popular item to display in these cases. Housewives also displayed their best china in these cases.

Chargers, on the other hand, are larger decorative plates that a hostess would put at each place setting. Servants would take these away and replace them with plates of food. In French dining service, there should always be a plate in front of the person dining, whether full or not. So between each course, the serve would set the charger in front of the guest or family member.

Your plate has all the marks of authentic Limoges china. The McKinley Tariff Law went into effect in 1891, so all imported goods after that time had to be marked with the name of the country of origin. All Limoges items lacking the word "France" were made before 1891.

First, it has the maker's mark (partially obscured) in green on the bottom of the piece. This identifies the specific factory in Limoges that cast and fired your plate. This mark was impressed into the porcelain under the glaze at the point when the porcelain was still blank or "whiteware." Sometimes the mark just says "Limoges France," but in this case it seems to bear the name of Magnac-Bourg Limoges. Some marks incorporate a symbol such as a bird or a butterfly, but in this case it’s star with the word “Limoges” set into it.

The decorator's mark appears on the front of the plate. It seems to read “F. Faure.” While one of the presidents of France was named Felix Faure, there isn’t any evidence that he was a lowly plate decorator before winning that high office. The signature in this case is handwritten. Many Limoges pieces say "Peint Main," which stood for hand painted, on the back.

The mark on the back of your plate that is the clearest is that of the importer. In this case LS &S stands for Lazarus Strauss & Sons of New York, founded in 1869. The company imported chinaware from various countries in Europe, including Britain, France, and Germany and Czechoslovakia. In 1874, his son Nathan, got RH Macy to permitted them to have a glass and chinaware department in their store, making LS & S wares the first china and glassware to be sold by Macy’s. And while LS & S imported china, they also operated factories in the leading china making centers in the above countries.

Today, case plates and chargers made in Limoges, France, sell for $25 and up, depending on their age. Sets of 6 sell for much more.

What's Cookin'?

QUESTION: My great-grandmother died recently and my husband and I now have the task of disposing of her monstrous, cast-iron kitchen stove, which we understand belonged to her mother. Is it worth moving the stove to our place or should we just call a junk dealer to remove it?

ANSWER: Depending on the ultimate condition of your great-grandmother’s stove, you may find that it’s worth far more than you imagine. You have two options: Clean it up, restore it, and use it in some way in your house or sell it. Either way, there are a few things you need to know about old kitchen stoves before you decide.

Colonial life centered around giant smoking, inefficient fireplaces. The walk-in Colonial hearth dominated the most important room in the house—the kitchen. Housewives or their servants continually added fuel to the cooking fires throughout the day. After supper, cooks kept the fading embers alive until the following morning, when they began the daily routine of stoking, feeding, and cooking once again.

During the 1790s, a Massachusetts-born physicist named Benjamin Thompson (aka Count Rumford) discovered how inefficient these fireplaces were and set out to invent a better solution. The Rumford stove had shallower fireplaces and a more streamlined chimney that forced out smoke but not heat. It featured one fire source that could heat several cooking pots and enabled the cook to regulate the heat individually for each pot. It was more of a fireplace insert than a stove and required modification of the huge hearths. These became  status symbol among the wealthy. Even Thomas Jefferson had several installed at Monticello.The downside about the Rumford stove was that it was meant for large kitchens.

Foundries began producing small wood-burning kitchen stoves, complete with ovens, in the early 19th century. Forty years later, makers produced full-sized kitchen stoves by the thousands. The size of kitchen stoves increased the manufacturers offered such options as warming ovens, extra surface burners, shelves, water reservoirs, and decorative panels of enamel or porcelain.

Historians refer to this style of six-and ten-plate wood-burning, box stove as a laundry stove because housewives or servants could place wash kettles on the flat, top surface. Some laundry stoves, such as the one invented by J.T. Davy, featured hooks for six flat irons around the belly of the stove. These, plus a putting one on the loading plate, enabled the laundress to heat seven irons at once.

British inventor, James Sharp patented the first successful gas stove in 1826. During the 1910s, gas stoves appeared with enamel coatings that made the stoves easier to clean. Most households had gas stoves with enclosed ovens by the 1920s. However, the slow installation of gas lines to most households delayed the progress of gas stoves. By World War I, the new gas stoves permanently replaced fireplaces for cooking.

If you’re planning on selling your great-grandmother’s stove, check the porcelain areas carefully. While you can easily clean it with a strong kitchen degreaser, you cannot replace any part that is badly cracked or missing. The only thing you can do in that case is to paint the damaged area with white or colored porcelain repair paint. But this only works on small areas.

Monumental monstrosities like your great-grandmother’s kitchen stove, are some of the most sought-after antiques. They helped raise and bake bread and simmered soup for hours on cold winter days. Today, the old time kitchen stove has come to symbolize the concept of "home."