Figural Cookie Jars Still Hold Delicious Delights

QUESTION: I’ve come across two old cookie jars when cleaning out my parents home and wondered if they are worth anything. Are they collectible?

ANSWER: Cookie jars don't have to be old to have substantial value since collectors determine a jar’s value  by design, rarity and condition more than its age. Though the British used covered jars of cut glass and silver made especially to hold shortbread biscuits during the 19th Century, thus the name “biscuit jar,” it was the American pottery jar that first caught the eye of collectors.

The first American cookie jars, either glass or pottery, gained popularity at the start of the Great Depression in 1929. Shaped like covered glass cylinders or pots with screw-on lids, these early cookie containers were more utilitarian than decorative although they were often painted with floral or leaf decorations.
                                   
The Brush Pottery Company of Zanesville, Ohio, produced the first ceramic cookie jar, in green and with "Cookies" painted on the front. The company marked their jars with “Brush USA.”
By the mid-1930s, stoneware became the predominant material for American cookie jars.

As the end of the 1930s decade dawned, most manufacturers followed the move to molded pottery, and designers became more innovative as they began to produce cookie jars in figural shapes resembling fruits, vegetables, animals, and other whimsical characters such as Goldilocks.

The golden age of American cookie jars got underway in 1940 and lasted until 1970, with several manufacturers rising to prominence, including the Red Wing, McCoy, Brush,. Hull, Regal China, Metlox, Shawnee, and Robinson-Ransbottom companies. Many of these companies located in the clay-rich Ohio River Valley. By the mid-1940s, cartoons and comics inspired many makers to reproduce the popular characters of the day–Superman, Winnie the Pooh, Dumbo, Mickey Mouse, and Woody Woodpecker, to name a few.

Collectors love McCoy cookie jars. The company, based in Roseville, Ohio, produced cookie jars from about 1939 until 1987. Their first jar–the “Mammy” cookie jar–is today one of the most valuable.

American Bisque of Williamstown, West Virginia is recognized as another top U. S. manufacturer, beginning in the mid-1930s. They’re particularly well known for the cartoon characters which they translated into cookie jars, and they marked them “U.S.A.” on the bottom.

Other well respected U.S. manufacturers are known for particular cookie jars or series, such as Metlox of California, maker of the highly sought after Little Red Riding Hood jar, and the Abingdon Pottery of Illinois, maker of the Mother Goose jar series.

Today, with the advent of Zip-Loc packaging and plastic, air-tight containers, the cookie jar, for the most part, has gone the way of the horse and buggy and the Ford Edzel. But the nostalgia lives in on the cookie jar collections of hundreds of admirers who long for those good old days and the delicious homemade cookies found inside these jars.

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Harmonica Memories

QUESTION: When I was about six years old, my dad gave me a harmonica. It was just a basic one, nothing special, but to me, it was very special. This was back in the mid-1950s and westerns were big on T.V. I watched several of them in which the cowboys would be sitting around the campfire and one of them would invariably be playing a harmonica. I loved that harmonica. What can you tell me about the history of the harmonica? I’m considering starting a collection of them and would like to know what types to collect.

ANSWER: Most harmonica collectors can trace their interest in them to their childhood. Fathers would often give their sons a harmonica—it was definitely a boy thing—when they were five or six years old.

The modern harmonica was invented in Germany. However, the distinctive element that makes a harmonica play—the "free reed" that vibrates to produce a tone as wind passes over it—dates to a Chinese instrument called the sheng, supposedly invented by an empress named Nuwa around 3000 BC.

This deceptively simple, portable instrument—also known. as the mouth organ, mouth harp, pocket piano and tin sandwich—does span a surprisingly broad range of American culture. It has been said there are as many harmonicas in the United States as other kinds of musical instruments combined, although they aren’t as visible today as they once were.

Besides the standard versions, harmonicas have featured such entertainment icons as Mickey Mouse, Popeye, Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, to name a few, as well as sports figures such as Stan Musial, an avid harmonica player who published a song book. Novelty harmonicas come in a variety of shapes, including crabs, alligators, a cob of corn, even guns.

A basic Hohner Marine Band 10-hole diatonic harmonica can often be found for around $20-$25. One could collect just Marine Band models, in fact, for this name has been applied to at least 30 different models over more than 100 years, each available in a variety of keys and packaged in an array of boxes. Some collectors specialize in particular models.

Most collectible harmonicas sell for $45 to $200. A small number go for $200 to $400, and there are just a few higher than that. As with all collectibles, their rarity, age and condition are important.

The Holy Grail of harmonica collecting is the Pipeolion by the C. Weiss Company, a 10-hole, 7-inch model with sounding pipes that fan out from the body.  About eight are known to exist.

Beginning harmonica collectors often have difficulty determining the age of a particular model.  In fact, they may be fooled into thinking a harmonica is older than it is because some companies, especially Hohner, stamped  a variety of 19th and 20th-century dates on the cover plates of most of their harmonicas. These don't indicate when the harmonica was made, but rather important dates in company history, such as the founding of the Hohner factories, or in some cases when the company won a prize, such as the Grand Prix Paris of 1917.

But reasonably accurate dating is possible by carefully examining both the external and internal structure of a harmonica. Some manufacturers stamped their instruments with registration numbers that can be tracked. Early harmonicas had reed plates made of lead, with nickel-plated covers of stamped steel or tin. Reeds and covers became brass in the late 1800s or early 1900s. Celluloid cover plates became common on some harmonicas in the early 1900s, and both bright metallic colors and a streamlined look clearly mark harmonicas made in the Art Deco 1920s and 1930s.

The material of the central body, or comb, of a harmonica evolved, as well. Early on, pear wood was the standard, but swelled and become rough with moisture over time. Very old instruments sometimes show the marks of whittling or trimming to alleviate this problem. Mahogany and other hardwoods proved more durable. And synthetic bodies, sometimes translucent, took over on less expensive models beginning in the 1950s.

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