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

Answer:
To my knowledge the only dinnerware line claimed by Red Wing to be dishwasher safe was Ceramastone, their final line introduced late 1966. Brochures for earlier patterns claimed to be "detergent safe" but did not mention dishwashers. Most likely this is because dishwashers were not commonly found in American households at the time.

Ebb Tide was introduced in 1965, and I expect it will do just fine in a modern dishwasher. To be safe you might want to run a couple of pieces through the dishwasher a few times and inspect them afterwards. Perhaps your box includes a chipped piece or two that could serve as guinea pigs.

Larry

Answer:
Village Green pieces were not hand thrown. They were formed by a mold or via ram press.

By mug I assume you mean the 5 inch tall beverage mug, not the coffee cup-shaped mug. These were formed in a mold, and Red Wing used many of them over the 17 years of production. I have three such mugs in front of me — one has RED WING USA in raised letters, the second has the same wording in impressed letters, and the third is completely unmarked. The raised letter version seems to be the most common from my experience. Why the differences? I suspect there is no good reason. Red Wing was haphazard at best at marking their wares and I doubt they put much thought into how the markings on these mugs appeared.

I’m not sure about your mug with the white Red Wing marking. How is the marking applied and how does it appear? Raised letters, ink stamp, impressed letters? Is the marking white merely because it is not covered with glaze, thus allowing the white clay to show through? Without a photo or more thorough description I really don’t know what you have here.

Larry