}ULASERJET}.mt 10 .hm 3 .h1Grayson Enterprises Ltd. One time rights .h231 Oct. 1990 1,l39 words .h3Page #. .LS2     COLLECTORS CRAVE COOKIE JARS  Written and Photographed by June Grayson     They don't make cookies like they used to: home-made cookies   with sugar sparkling on top, thick and cake-like in the center,   and crispy brown on the edges. They don't make grandmothers like they used to: a soft and   round kind of grandmother wearing a big apron, with time to bake   the cookies and stir hot coffee into milk for cookie dunking. They don't make cookie jars like they used to, either: jars crafted of the finest hand-blown art glass or delicate porcelain   hand-painted with a profusion of flowers or cut-glass lead   crystal that rang like a bell when you tapped it with a spoon. Unless you shop the antique stores and sales, you won't find   any cookie jars to compare with the Victorian cracker jars or   biscuit barrels. And that's a pity. The Victorian china, silver,   π03 Šand glass manufacturers made their jars in every conceivable   color, shape and material: silver, glass, pottery, stoneware,   earthenware, tin, and porcelain. We don't know who made the first cookie jar or when. Almost   every culture has had some sweet treat to call its own. Did the   Israelites have food storage jars when they fled Egypt for the   Sinai desert? How did the American Indians store their maple   sugar treats? Roman soldiers in Great Britain during the time of Christ   carried some kind of cracker in tin containers - a foreshadowing   of the wonderful English biscuit tin era between 1868 and 1939   when over 40,000 different tins were produced in England alone. Please see the detailed book with gorgeous color photography   called "British Biscuit Tins - 1868-1939 - An Aspect of   Decorative Packaging" by M. J. Franklin. The English probably started it all. They had to have   something to eat with the exotic new beverages - the coffees and   teas - brought from the Orient by the clipper ships of the East   India Company between 1600 and 1874. The cracker jars became   popular in England during the Nineteenth century when serving tea   had become a national tradition. A family displayed its pretti  est biscuit jar with the silver tea service on the dining room   sideboard and reserved it for company. The plainer jars were for   every day use in the kitchen.   π03  Š Surprisingly, it was the American silver manufacturers who   popularized biscuit jars in the United States and advertised them   in their silver trade catalogs. Silver manufacturers made the   silver-plated rims, lids, and handles. They imported decorative   glass jars from France and England until American glass and   pottery makers took over. You can find the advertisements in the   old trade catalogs preserved in historical museums and reproduced   in reference books about antiques. Manufacturers also produced humidors, pickle jars, and   ginger jars just as opulently designed as the biscuit jars.   Sometimes a creamer and sugar bowl were made to match the biscuit   jar. Unfortunately, there are no reference books on Victorian   cracker jars. You will find cracker jars listed under almost   every manufacturer of glass, porcelain, and pottery in the yearly   antique price guides. Books about English and American art glass   describe and picture priceless museum-quality cracker jars.   Specialty reference books - for example, Cohen's book on Wave  crest Glass, Gaston's books on R. S. Prussia, and Heacock's books   on Fenton Glass - picture many examples of cracker jars. You might think it would be impossible to mistake anything   else for a cookie jar, but I managed to do it several times.   Manufacturers sometimes made the same body for both cracker jars   and humidors. The final use was determined by the lid used on   π03 Šthe jar. The humidor lid usually has a place where a sponge can   be inserted to hold water to keep the tobacco fresh and moist.   Some china makers produced sugar jars for restaurant or railroad   train use that were oversize; the opening of the sugar jar is   smaller than that for a cracker jar. The Sears Roebuck Catalog   of 1908 advertised their squatty covered jars as suitable for use   as either a covered vegetable dish or a cracker jar. And in the   very beginning of my collecting I bought a straight-sided milk   glass covered jar that I learned later was a storage jar for a   Victorian gentleman's celluloid collars.  Perhaps you will be lucky enough to find some examples of   Carnival glass cracker jars. Be sure you don't pay top price for   a pattern that has been reproduced. I thought I was lucky to   find a Hobstar marigold cracker jar by Imperial priced at $85.00 and pictured on page 102 of "Carnival Glass" by Bill Edwards.   Later I discovered on page 98 of "Confusing Collectibles" by   Hammond that Imperial has reproduced this pattern. Now I have   another marigold Hobstar jar for which I paid $15.00. I can't   tell the difference. I still think they are beautiful. Maybe   some day I will meet a carnival glass expert who can tell me if   both of them are old, which is what I would like to believe.   More likely they are both the later reproductions and I paid too   much for the first one. Depression glass companies produced thousands of cracker   π03 Šjars. Few have survived and some of the patterns have been   reproduced, such as the clear Sandwich pattern glass jar. American pottery manufacturers have produced thousands of   patterns of the figural pottery cookie jars since the 1930s and   even up to the present time. The nicest thing about this area of   cookie jar collecting is that documentation is so complete. "Cookie Jars" by Westfall has been out for several years with   prices updated in 1989. A new Encyclopedia of Cookie Jars, by Joyce and Fred Roerig, listing 2,500 figural cookie jars with   over a thousand jars pictured in full color, should be available   in late 1990.  Companies still produce cookie jars. Almost every gift,   holiday, and museum catalog will offer at least one or two   samples. I buy a few new jars every year, the ones I think my   grandchildren will love when they grow up, such as Big Bird, a   Dinosaur, and the Pillsbury Boy Chef.  Perhaps the most famous contemporary cookie jar collector   was the late Andy Warhol. He called cookie jars "pieces of   time." And so they are. Thousands of them and all adding up to   an intriguing history of an entire age. No one believed Warhol   when he said he was putting his money in cookie jars. At his   estate sale in 1988, a pair of his jars sold for $23,100.  It is not likely that any of my jars, or your jars, will   appreciate as much as the Warhol jars. But our appetite for   π0- Šsweets of every kind - and the jars we keep them in - may well   remain insatiable.   #####