Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009

Soap company relied on traveling salesmen

My grandmother sold Larkin products door-to-door back in the early 1920s and received a ceramic platter as a prize. It's marked "Limoges China Co., Sebring, Ohio." What can you tell me about the Larkin Co. and Limoges China Co.? John Durant Larkin (1845-1926) founded a soap factory in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1875. The first soap it made, Sweet Home Soap, was sold by street vendors. Larkin products eventually included several types of soap, cosmetics, perfume, pharmaceuticals and other items that were sold by traveling salesmen and through mail-order catalogs.

The company began offering "elegant picture cards" as premiums in every box of soap in 1881. Later, handkerchiefs, towels, watches, silver-plated flatware, lamps, furniture and other premiums were offered. Sets of dinnerware were first offered as premiums in the 1893 catalog. The company went out of business in 1967.

Don't be confused by the word "Limoges" on your platter. It isn't Limoges china from France - although Limoges china made by a French porcelain factory was offered as a Larkin premium in the early 1900s.

The Limoges China Co. of Sebring, Ohio, was in business from 1900 until 1955. The company used various trade-names for its products during those years. It advertised pieces as "American Limoges" beginning in the late 1940s to avoid a lawsuit.

I bought an old library table that's made of wood, but the grain was painted on. How was this done? Is it worth more than regularly finished furniture? Grain-painting was a popular technique for decorating furniture in the 1800s. Many 19th-century American families couldn't afford furniture made of expensive woods like mahogany. So they painted cheaper wood, like pine, to imitate and sometimes exaggerate the veins, grains and figures of real hardwood.

In the 19th century, graining was achieved using two-tone painting, vinegar painting, mottling, sponging, stippling or feather painting. Several layers of paint were required to produce the desired effect. Sometimes a thin coat of opaque or semi-opaque paint or glaze was applied to soften the colors. Antique American furniture with its original paint can be very expensive. Removing the paint from a piece decreases its value and makes it harder to identify where it was made.

My silver syrup pitcher with an undertray is marked "Quadruple/Van Bergh S.P. Co., Rochester, N.Y." Can you tell me something about the maker and age of my pitcher?

Van Bergh Silver Plate Co. was founded by brothers Frederick and Maurice Van Bergh in Rochester, N.Y., in 1892. It became part of Oneida in 1926 and moved to Oneida, N.Y.

Your syrup pitcher is quadruple-plate silver, which means it was plated with four times the amount of silver as standard silver plate. Syrup pitchers were popular in the late 1890s.