Tag Archives: flour sack aprons

School Snack Picture: Family Collectibles Identified

After School Peanut Butter Cookies

After school snack of peanut butter cookies and milk. Harriette Kaser’s china, vintage Daffy Duck glass and Grandma Vera Anderson’s apron.

I used this  picture with family collectibles in my post about peanut butter cookies. Here’s the background.

Mother’s China

The cookies sit on a china saucer that is all I have of the set of china that my parents (Harriette and Paul Kaser) used for many years.The bottom of the piece has two logos–one is a brand featuring the letters H C and L combined into a pattern. The other is a seashell (although it doesn’t look like a natuilus.  The words , letters and numbers “Eggshell Nautilus, U.S. A. L 39 N 5” also are printed on the bottom.

I learned from RobinsNest.com, that the company is Homer Laughlin, and the company source told me that company was founded by two brothers in East Liverpool Ohio, in 1871.  Later, the company was to build more factories across the river in Newell West Virginia, and that is where my mother’s china would have been made. Eventurally the company was purchased by the Wells family, who still run the business.

There were many designs called Eggshell Nautilus, and this pattern, which does not show up for sale much on line is called Ardmore. From the E-How website, I learned keys to the letters and numbers found on the bottom of the piece. I learned it was made in December 1939 (So probably purchased in 1940 when I was one year old.) Although pretty, these pieces qualify more as family collectibles than fine antiques.

The Homer Laughlin Company now now concentrates on Fiesta Dinnerware.  The same company that did the delicately painted China of my mother’s pattern and hundreds others, also started the now better-known Fiesta Ware in 1935.

Grandma Vera Anderson’s Apron

This apron, used here as a kind of tablecloth for the after school snack, was made from flour-sack material. It has made it through three generations of use, and my grand daughter now wears it when she visits me to cook–a fourth generation of wear.  I wrote about it, and other aprons here. Flour sack aprons and garments are definitely family collectibles–few survive because they were USED.

The Daffy Duck Glass

When I was young we had a cupboard full of these juice glasses.  Jelly and cheese spreads came packaged in these glass jars with pry-off metal lids.  An environmentally sensitive packaging gimmick before anybody was particularly paying attention to the environment, enhanced with the kid-catching cartoon figures. So that makes my Daffy Duck glass one of the more valuable family collectible as each year passes.

In fact, for a while you could still get your pimento or pineapple (oh my gosh, I had forgotten about pineapple cheese spread!) in a glass jar–but, sadly, without the cartoon characters. I could not find any manufactured in 2016.

UPDATE: I wrote to Kraft’s page on Facebook, and got the following information:

Kraft still makes Jar Cheese in Old English, Pimento, Pineapple available all year round and Roka Blue which is available during the winter holidays only. We suggest trying out our product locator here http://bit.ly/1KAUCMx to see local grocery stores that may have stocked the product within the last 30 days.

That worked for me. So have fun.

You can also find it on line, but CHECK the EXPIRATION DATE.

This has been another in my occasional posts on family heirlooms–in this case family collectibles rather than more valuable antiques.

Other bloggers doing Family Heirloom stories:

Flour Sacks, Man Aprons and Daniel Patrick Moynihan

At Thanksgiving, when we each expressed what we were thankful for, I said I was thankful for the ancestors who left us stories and recipes and dishes and silver to remember them by.

“What about the aprons,” said my oldest son.

“Huh?” I said.

“You’re thankful for the Ancestors–what about the Aprons?”

Ah, yes…the aprons.  The drawer full of aprons is part of what got Ancestors in Aprons started earlier this year. So here are a few aprons that bring memories flooding back every time I open the drawer.

old aprons

My grand daughter wearing her great-great grandmother’s apron.

Grandma Vera's flour sack apron

Grandma Vera’s flour sack apron

My grand daughter wears Grandma Vera’s flour sack apron when we make Christmas cookies. That apron not only reminds me of Grandma Vera, but also of that wonderful, soft, colorfully printed material that flour used to come in. We used flour sacks to make aprons, but also to make skirts and summer tops and hot pads and on and on. It was a favorite material to learn to sew on. And it got softer and softer as it aged.

A worn out apron strap

A worn out apron strap

Grandma’s flour sack apron is pretty soft, but it is also wearing out around the neck band.

 

 

Harriette's Apron

Harriette’s Apron

My mother taught high school classes in home economics. Aprons were a favorite project–easy to cut and sew, and I seem to recall her telling me that this apron was one that a student left behind.  The hook and eye at the neck don’t work, and while the pinafore style offers lots of protection, mother had safety pins stuck in the shoulders, where she would pin it to her dress, since the student didn’t quite finish her project. There is no waist-tie.

Home Made Grandma apron

Home Made Grandma apron

As I said, aprons are an easy sewing project. And when I was a young mother I frequently made Christmas presents.  One year I made aprons for everyone in the family.  The two grandmothers–Harriette Kaser and Agnes Badertscher got this apron–“Grandma’s Helping Hands” with the hand prints of my two young sons (before the third came along).

Paul Kaser in apron

Paul Kaser in apron

I really had to laugh when I came across the pictures of my father and my Uncle Bill Anderson carving turkeys.  What sports, to wear those frilly aprons.

Bill Anderson in an apron

Bill Anderson in an apron

 

Lucky for them, in the 1960s when backyard barbeques became essential equipment for every home, and men reverted to their caveman roots, Man Aprons became the rule of the day. Here are two that my Father got as Christmas presents.

 

Grandpa Paul Kaser's apron

“Grandpa” Paul Kaser’s apron

Paul Kaser's Man Apron

Paul Kaser, griller, had his Man Apron

 

 

 

Before there were cute cat videos, there was the awesomely popular Garfield–the original Grumpy Cat. And even before that there was B. Kliban drawing CATS.

And my boys (three now, with hands much bigger than those on the grandma aprons, gave me a MomCat apron for Christmas. Years later, I learned that my sister Paula’s boys had given her the same apron.

Mom Cat Apron

Mom Cat Apron, design by B. Kliban

I want to mention one more apron that means a lot to me, although when somebody inherits it, they won’t recognize the reason I was so attached.  It has the logo of Roll Call printed at the top. Roll Call is the “neighborhood newspaper” for Congress and all the staff of the Members of Congress. When I was working for a congressman, I entered a cooking contest that Roll Call held, and was invited to the cookoff in Washington on Capitol Hill.

You can find the recipe here, because I baked Killer Corn Bread.  Each contestant was given an apron, and that’s the one in my drawer.  But I did not actually wear it during the cookoff. That’s because a Senator who was one of the judges wanted an apron and they had run out.  A manager of the cookoff asked me if they could borrow mine. I said only if the Senator signed the apron and returned it to me.  He agreed.

Roll Call apron

Roll Call apron. Bogie looks dubious.

The signature of Patrick Moynihan scrawled boldly across the front of the apron is almost illegible now, because, foolishly, I wore the apron to cook in, and I washed it.  Unfortunately, the pen he used was not waterproof.  I can still see a few strokes, and I can still remember how delighted I was to meet the famous Senator.

If you have forgotten who Senator Moynihan was and what he did for the United States–I suggest you look him up.  I was not of his political party, and yet I believe he was one of the most intelligent and creative legislators we ever had in this country.

Apron signed by Patrick Moynihan

See that double loop down in the right corner? That’s It! That is the signature of Daniel Patrick Moynihan. What? You can’t see it?

And that’s my thanks to the aprons.