Many pottery and glass companies in the mid-20th century supplemented lines for which they were most famous with an occasional advertising item commissioned by another company. These items are especially valued by collectors with a personal affinity for the advertisement.

Advertising in kitchen ceramics

Those of you who have followed this column over the years would know that I have an extensive collection of Hull and McCoy Ivory Foam/Brown Drip pottery that I use in the kitchen, but I hadn’t previously noted the advertising items made in these sets. One of these is a complete Hull Brown Ivory Foam carafe set marked on the base as Crestone, a very slightly later version of Hull’s immensely popular line in this Brown Drip color that was made from the early 1960s through the 1980s. This version from the carafe and matching cup sports the crest for Green Mountain College (closed in 2019) in my state of Vermont. The complete unaffiliated version of the set can be seen in an advertising page reprinted on page 36 of the book Collector’s Guide to Hull Pottery; the Dinnerware Lines by Barbara Loveless Gick-Burke (Collector Books, 1993). The whole carafe set, especially as an advertising piece, can be considered rare.

Another advertising example is a mug with the advertiser’s name integrated into the clay. Although the item was not actually made by Myers, the bottom is marked “Imported and Bottled by Fred L. Myers and Son, Baltimore, MD, 80 proof.” The white clay rim on the base indicates the mug itself would have been made by an American company, probably either Hull or McCoy (Items made in Canada or Japan with a brown glaze have a red-brick-colored base rim).

I picked this up at an antique mall because rum is my own favorite (very occasional) celebratory beverage.

My third advertising item is a Hull coffee cup with the white crest logo for my undergrad alma mater, the University of New Hampshire (still going strong after 100 years). Its base is simply marked “hull [small h and name in block print], Oven Proof USA [in cursive].” (Hull Ivory Foam and McCoy Brown Drip items are mostly all marked oven proof; I bake Thanksgiving pies in Hull pie plates).

My mom’s favorite “advertising set” among ceramic kitchen collectibles featured the Pillsbury Dough Boy, whose form was made in everything from salt and pepper shakers to Cookie jars. The earliest versions were made in the 1980s in the classically chubby form that most of us think of when we think of this advertising character. Later versions were more stylized.