Question:
I have a pink chef pierre cookie jar but can’t find the value of it anywhere. Could you please let me know a little about it? I also have a pink pedastel cake dish that matches it. It’s really funny, but the cake dish came from my mother and the cookie jar was my husband’s mother’s. Any idea on the cake dish too? Thanks Donna B.

Answer:
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 to $125 in the yellow or tan colors, with another $25 to $50 for blue. Green would be worth more because the color is less common. The fleck blue and fleck pink colors should be worth still more due to their relative rarity, in the $250 to $300 range and maybe more to a collector who seeks one of each color.

The pink pedestal cake plate does not belong to any dinnerware pattern or line. It’s just a cake plate made to sell on its own. These were made in several colors in the mid-1950s. Value is $25-30 in excellent condition.

Larry