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There’s something besides cookies in old cookie jars. Some might say
there’s gold in them. An auction of Andy
Warhol's collection of over 125 ceramic cookie jars in 1987 yielded an
amazing $250,000 and rekindled interest in
collecting them. Warhol purchased most of his cookie jars at flea markets,
just like many collectors today.  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.The British used covered jars of cut glass and silver made especially to hold shortbread biscuits during the 19th Century. But 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 ceramics, and design exploration became much more innovative as they began to produce cookie jars in figural shapes resembling fruits, vegetables, animals, and other whimsical characters such as Little Red Riding Hood. 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. One jar in demand by collectors is shaped like Yogi Bear, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon character who debuted on television in 1958. Today, Yogi cookie jars, made by the American Bisque Co. of Williamstown, West Virginia, can sell for as much as $400. 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. 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. McCoy also made a huge variety of fruit and vegetable jars, and most are embossed with McCoy on the bottom. 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 most are marked on the bottom “U.S.A.” Other well respected U.S. manufacturers are known for particular 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. But the nostalgia lives in on the collections of hundreds of admirers who long for those good old days. |