The figure looked like many of the other ceramic sculptures of African Americans that I’d seen in discount stores. This was an image of George Washington Carver, the man who experimented with peanuts at Tuskegee back in the day and became famous for it.
I never liked those other crude depictions of black people that looked as if they were done to make a quick buck. But this one was a little bigger, a little more elegant and did not look anything like Carver.
As I handled the figure I saw that the head was not attached, so I gently pulled at it. Then I realized it was a whiskey decanter. I checked the bottom and it was marked “Americana Porcelain. McCormick Distilling Company.”
What blasphemy! The great George Washington Carver reduced to a container to hold whiskey! Then I learned that this company’s decanters are highly collectible.
It showed Carver with one knee bent sitting on a bag of peanuts with a pink rose on his lapel. He was holding a plant, and at his feet were a mortar and pestle and other implements of science. It was nearly 10″ tall.
Googling, I found that the porcelain decanter was part of the company’s “The Great Americans” series. This series, produced in the late 1970s, included such people as Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Bell, Henry Ford, Mark Twain, Eleanor Roosevelt, Pocahontas, Will Rogers and Charles Lindbergh.
The Carver decanter was manufactured in 1977.
Carver was born of enslaved Africans in Missouri and went on to become one of the country’s most renowned scientists. He attended Iowa State University and earned a master’s degree in 1896 in agricultural science. He was tapped by Booker T. Washington to head the agriculture department at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where he would stay until he died in 1943.
He became known for creating farming practices and products, including new uses for such products as peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans and other crops. He taught black and white farmers how to rotate crops and how to grow peanuts to nourish the soil.
Carver made more than 300 products from peanuts, including milk, soap, ink, paint and plastics, and 118 from sweet potatoes. He got little financial benefit from his inventions, filing only three patents. His products, he said, “should be available to all people.”
The McCormick company, based in Weston, MO, produced at least 18 different series – about 175 decanters in all – from 1968 to 1987. They included Confederates, gunfighters, sports and mascots, birds, lamps and Bicentennial.
One series was titled “Portraits of Elvis” that depicted him at various stages of his career, and these are considered the most popular. There were five decanters in the series – all music boxes – that were made from 1977 to 1980. The first featured Elvis in a white jumpsuit with painted feathers and shows him just before he died in 1977. Here’s the second in the series, with a music box that plays “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Here’s another of Elvis Karate.
McCormick’s series of decanters, one site noted, are among the most collectible because of their quality.
The company was founded in 1856 and touts that it is the oldest distillery west of the Mississippi River still operating out of its original location. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
On eBay, the Carver decanter was not selling – perhaps because of the price – just like some of the others in the various series. Most of the Elvis decanters were selling, but even those prices had a wide range, with most below $50.
