Question:
My 89 year-old mother inherited from her aunt a Red Wing cookie jar which she first saw at her aunt’s home in Atlanta in 1936, when she was 18. The piece depicts an overweight chef, and has a lid. "Red Wing USA" appears on the bottom. All is glazed. The basic color is yellow and it measures 10/11 inches high. I can make a picture of it with my camera but do not have one at this moment. We would like to know the date and value of the piece. Sincerely, Gene

Answer: Either your 1936 date is incorrect or you do not have a Red Wing chef cookie jar. The "Chef" cookie jar was introduced by Red Wing in 1941, along with his friends Katrina the Dutch girl and Friar Tuck. Price lists from 1942, 1943 and 1944 show them as being available in blue, yellow, and tan colors. An undated brochure, probably from the mid to late 1940s adds green as an available color. The early brochures refer to the jar as "Pierre the Chef".

These three cookie jars were great sellers for Red Wing. Many thousands of them were made and production continued into the mid 1950s. By then Katrina and Friar Tuck were dropped from production, but the Chef continued on along with several newly introduced cookie jar shapes. An brochure from 1956 lists fleck pink and fleck blue as the only two available colors. This is probably the last year of production for the Chef as he does not appear in a 1957 dealers price list.

Yellow seems to have been the best seller for colors, followed by blue, tan and green. The later fleck pink and fleck blue are not as common because they were made for a much shorter period, at the very end of production.

You did not mention the condition of your pink chef cookie jar, and of course condition is a major factor in the value of a collectible. While the Chef and his friends are not at all rare, jars in excellent condition are not easy to find in any color. After years of use (often by the small hands of children more interested in the contents than the jar), these jars are usually chipped or cracked and have grease stains. A Chef cookie jar in excellent condition would be worth around $100. Damage and stains would reduce the value significantly.

Larry