Answer: The butter boats that you’ve described are difficult to categorize. They do not belong to any Red Wing dinnerware pattern and can’t be considered art pottery. They are among a group of items that I refer to as "Novelty and Gift Items", so called because a number of them appear on a page with that title in a Red Wing dealer’s catalog. This group includes such items as the 5-section nut or relish dish, a round egg plate, a cake stand, a spoon rest, the Colonial pie plate and your butter boats. However, I’ve never seen any printed documentation of the butter boat and thus have very little info to share. All of them I’ve seen have the popular beige fleck glaze, thus they would go well with many Red Wing dinnerware patterns. Most likely they were made in the late 1950s or the 1960s. It’s possible they were a special order item requested by a restaurant. The beige fleck glaze would fit well with the Hotel or Restaurant pattern but the butter boat’s clay is much lighter in weight. I haven’t seen one of these sell in recent years but would estimate the value to be around $25 to $30 for a butter boat marked Red Wing and in excellent condition. Unmarked butter (and shrimp) boats made by other potteries can also be found, but to the best of my knowledge all of Red Wing’s were marked.

Larry