Reader asks about “Balky Mule” tray with African American motif

Friday at Auction Finds is readers’ questions day. I try to guide readers to resources for them to determine the value of their items. I’m not able to appraise their treasures, but I can do some preliminary research to get them started. So, these are market values based on prices I find on the web, not appraisal for insurance purposes that I suggest for items that have been determined to be of great value.

Today’s question is about a 19th-century pressed glass water tray whose center design depicts an African American family.

Question:

This glass is making me a bit crazy. I really want to know what it is. Maybe you can help.

I found this EAPG (Early American Pattern Glass) platter at an estate sale this summer. I saw it might have an unusual design but it was covered with rust and calcium – which luckily came off when soaked in vinegar.

I think this is what it portrays:

An African American family – father, mother & 2 kids (one barefoot on top of a barrel) – plus their dog, all in a 2-wheeled donkey cart, the parents urging their donkey (using parasols) to cross the train tracks quickly as the #12 engine approaches. There is also a cabin in the background. Looks like 19th-century style. The father has on a top hat, the mother a bonnet, I think.

It’s very heavy pressed glass, daisy and dot with thumbprint rim. 12″, 1.5″ rim.

Please, have you some idea??

Answer:

When I first saw a photo of the glass tray, the folks on the wagon looked to be African American, but it was hard for me to tell. I asked the reader if there were any markings on it, and she wrote back to say that there were none.

Without any manufacturer’s mark, I figured that it would be hard to identify the tray without some heavy digging. So I got out my shovel and started digging.

I wasn’t able to find much at first by searching Google, but I did get a chance to learn about Early American Pattern Glass, which has its share of collectors and their website, along with a museum of American glass in West Virginia. Pattern glass, also known as pressed glass, was made from around 1850 to 1910, according to Collectors Weekly. Made in cast-iron molds, the glass’ quality is below that of blown glass or hand-cut crystal.

Pressed glass was made by a number of companies that sometimes copied each other’s patterns, but by World War I, major names such as Baccarat and Waterford were making glass inexpensive enough for anyone to afford. Then other companies popped up that offered it even cheaper.

On the web, I first came across a glass tray like the reader’s in a 2011 auction where it was described as a “rare” – which is almost never the case – 1880s serving tray made by Bellaire Goblet Co. The seller also identified it as black Americana; it sold for $25.

With a manufacturer’s name, I expanded my search, and found the tray for sale on eBay and several retail sites with the title “Currier & Ives Balky Mule water tray.” So, I assumed that the well-known print-maker Currier & Ives had sanctioned the tray (it did not). Since it was a water tray, it likely held a glass pitcher and goblets.

One site showed photos of the tray not only in clear glass, but also in cobalt blue and amber (or old gold, as it was described). The cobalt was said to be unique and hard to find.

The reader’s “Balky Mule Water Tray” appears to be circa 1880s. The tray does depict a scene of an African American family using umbrellas to try to get its obstinate mule to cross the railroad tracks as a train rails toward them. Several websites cite Bellaire, a glass company based in Ohio, as the maker. The company operated from 1876 to 1892, according to the website vaselineglass.org.

According to that website, the tray was actually made by the Co-Operative Flint Glass Co. of Beaver Falls, PA, circa 1880s. The site noted that the company did not use colored glass in the Balky Mule tray (but the company apparently made colored glass tableware in the 1920s and 1930s).

Co-Operative made 35 pieces in a pattern commonly known as “Currier & Ives,” according to the website. The pattern got its name from the design on the water tray, which the website said “reminded” people of a Currier & Ives’ print.

Several sites repeated that the design was patterned after a print from the Currier & Ives Darktown Series, which were stereotypical drawings of African Americans trying to adapt to the social customs of whites after Reconstruction.

The company made the series of 75 color lithographs from 1879 to 1890, and they were apparently meant to be comical. White buyers thought they were and seemed to have snapped them up by the thousands. Currier & Ives also produced similar prints of immigrants, including the Irish and Italians.

I could find no Currier & Ives drawing resembling the design on the tray, so people may have been extrapolating based on what was depicted in the glass. The folks on the tray, though, were not as grotesquely drawn as any of the Darktown characters that I saw on the web.

The tray itself doesn’t seem to be very valuable. I found prices all over the place: The asking price on eBay was $9.99 to $115, but only one recently sold for $11.50. Five of them sold at an auction in Detroit for $70 in August.