“Friar Tuck” Salt and Pepper Shakers

By: Annemarie Christie 

 You might wonder why monks would make appropriate figures for salt and pepper shakers, but they were very popular in the 1950s, and today these ceramic “Friar Tuck” salt and pepper shakers at the museum are a very collectible set.
Logy Bay-Middle Cove-Outer Cove Museum: Photo by Annemarie Christie

 These two little charmers in the photo above reside in the Lifestyles section of the museum. They have no manufacturer’s name on them and no factory stamp. This leads to the conclusion that they were likely to have been manufactured in imitation of the Hummel “Friar Tuck” Monk salt and pepper shakers introduced by the German Goebel Porcelain Factory in the 1950s.  If they were genuine Goebel-made shakers they would have a Goebel mark (all genuine Hummel figurines have a crown mark, a bee in a v-shaped mark or one of the Goebel line marks on the bottom). The museum’s shakers could have been manufactured in the United States or Japan, and in spite of being an imitation, they are very detailed and painted by hand.

The original Goebel shakers were inspired by the porcelain Hummel figurines of Friar Tuck, also made by the Goebel factory, which date back to the early 1900s. The Hummel Monk figurines were purely decorative, whereas the Friar Tuck tableware series they produced was for table use. The tableware included sugar bowls and creamers, mustard pots and jugs, and even a Friar Tuck beer mug.

The background to the creation of the now famous Hummel figurines is an interesting one. The Goebel company made an exclusive agreement with Sister Maria Innocentia Hummel and the Convent of Siessen that granted Goebel the right to adapt the artist’s drawings into three-dimensional porcelain figurines. It would seem logical that the monk figurine was based on one of Sister Maria’s drawings.

If you compare the above photo of the museum’s shakers with the photo below of the original Hummel shakers, you can see the difference between the imitation and the originals. The museum’s shakers have slightly different hair, and the figures are holding the bible directly in front of them, rather than at their sides. They also have a slightly impish look on their faces, which makes them even cuter than the original Hummel shakers, in my opinion!

Hummel salt and pepper shakers: Photo courtesy of eBay


If you have a further interest in collectible salt and pepper shakers there is a group called The Salt and Pepper Club, whose sole focus is on shakers (you can find them online at http://www.saltandpepperclub.com).

I hope everyone enjoyed my first blog post for the Logy Bay-Outer Cove-Middle Cove Museum. Come on in and see the shakers for yourself!

                                                                                                                        --Annemarie

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Outer Cove Air

Image
Today is  #CleanAirDay in Canada, a day to highlight how important good air quality is for our health and our environment. We may be biased but we believe that, here in Newfoundland, we have some of the freshest air in all of Canada. Outer Cove Beach, 2017. Photo credit: Lisa Daly And, if we may be so bold, perhaps Outer Cove has some of the nicest air in all of Newfoundland! Some people from St. John's certainly thought so, according to stories from Mary Boland of Outer Cove about her mother and the laundry from St. John's. Mary was born and lived in the Rocky Hills area of Outer Cove in 1920, and during an oral history interview in 2000 conducted by her son, Martin Boland, she shared the following story. When Mary was in grade 7, which was likely around 1932, her mother Catherine Hickey (nee Dyer) broke her arm, so Mary left school to help her mother out at home. Her mother took in the laundry for several affluent families from the St. John's area. At the ti
Read more

The Forerunner

Image
It's a wet and miserable day outside, but the museum is cozy and we've got the kettle on. It's the perfect type of day to have a mug up and share some stories. My favourite kind of stories to tell on a wet and windy day are ghost stories, and I think I've found a good one. Fishing Stages - Outer Cove (from DAI) I've been doing some digging in the collections of the Digital Archives Initiative at Memorial University , looking for interesting stories from the Logy Bay-Middle Cove-Outer Cove area. This one comes by way of correspondence between "Big Willie" Croke and Martin Boland. "Big Willie" tells the story of Jimmy Carroll, a planter from Outer Cove, who had signed on as a deckhand for the S.S. Beverley when he was young. The S.S. Beverley was to transport codfish between Harbour Grace and Gibraltar in the winter of 1918. According to "Big Willie" Croke, Jimmy said, "I was living on top of the world that day and so e
Read more

Haunted Hangouts and Fairy Fields in LBMCOC

Image
The Logy Bay-Middle Cove-Outer Cove Museum season is almost over, but that doesn't mean guests and locals can't explore this beautiful community while the weather is still mild. Many tourists and practically all residents of LBMCOC will know about spots like Middle Cove Beach or the Outer Cove Lookout, but they may not know some of these other locations, or at least that they're reputedly the stomping grounds of ghosts and fairies. Roche's Meadow   We don't know for sure where Roche's Meadow is, but it's speculated to be (or to have been) on Barnes Road. No, not the urban, Victorian Barnes Road in St. John's ⁠— the idyllic, countryside Barnes Road in Outer Cove. A local woman recalled a memory of this area from her childhood: she was on her way home with her brother around dusk when the two of them saw "three little fellows dancin' up the wall... they'd dance and they'd hop... they were just like little elves. That's the truth
Read more