Featured Monmouth Pottery - Durgin Park bean pot

Picked this up today. Do I have a woo-hoo?
I can just make out the impressed maple leaf Monmouth Ill USA mark on the bottom. I can’t find a good internet resource for the Monmouth/maple leaf marks. At this point I’m thinking post-1906 but pre-1930? Really just a wild guess on my part. (EDIT: ...but it has the two-letter abbreviation for Massachusetts...)
Durgin Park was a 200 year old Boston restaurant that closed earlier this year.
I am debating whether or not to make a pot of authentic Boston baked beans in it!

 

ohh, make the beans.......it's lovely !

 

I don't know if it has any bearing on age that they used MA instead of MASS as the state abbreviation.

 

Great minds think alike, LOL. I was editing my original post to say the same thing.

May not be much of a woo-hoo anyway. An eBoo completed sale in March for a pot like this (with maple leaf mark) reached $405. But more recently, one (without maple leaf mark, but did have same lettering) went for only $29.99!

 

Here's the estate sale notice/photos when everything was auctioned off. Apparently, there were a few cases of these:

 

Hmmm, the writing on my pot is blue and appears to have been sponge-painted on, the pots in this photo have black writing that appears more like printing.

 

With that price variation I'd think there must be some modern reproductions in the sold listings. Your piece appears to be older than the ones below but it looks a bit too pristine to be almost hundred years old.

 

@Joe2007
Agreed.
Just wish I could find out more about the Monmouth mark, that would be very helpful! What little I could find seems to point to it being older. Kovels says, "The maple leaf mark was used until about 1930."
Another source states of Monmouth, "Its mark, the maple leaf was used until 1930. If the words ‘Monmouth Co.’ appear as part of the mark, the piece was made before 1906. After that year, the embossed mark became ‘Monmouth Western Stoneware’".

 

Not saying I'm 100% that the opening poster has a repro but;

Apparently old vintage items are sometimes used to help make molds for reproductions and these items will be slightly smaller than the real McCoy and will not have the same amount of detail or mold crispness. I wonder if something like this explains the mark on the OP's piece being so faint.

 

I just picked up a bean pot today and when I went digging online, found this thread. My pot has a maple leaf on the bottom as well, but I really cannot see what it says. From what I've seen others saying and what I have read, I can barely see monmouth. So is monmouth a boston beans sister company? Or maybe the same, simply without any other distinguishing marks or words. Kindly... HELP! lol

 

Welcome to the Forum!

Here’s instructions for uploading photos. Maybe best to start a new thread?

https://www.antiquers.com/threads/making-a-post-and-uploading-pictures.16038/

 

This is the first time I have ever participated in a thread conversation like this, so bear with me. However, I will upload some pics and start a thread myself. I appreciate the tip

 

I can give a little company history. The following information comes from the book Monmouth-Western Stoneware by Jim Martin and Bette Cooper: Monmouth Pottery Company was organized in February 1893. The maple leaf mark was first used in April, 1901. In 1906, Monmouth started the process to merge with six other local pottery companies to form Western Stoneware. In 1906 ware carrying the Monmouth Pottery logo ceased to exist.

So if the name inside the maple leaf is Monmouth Pottery Co it is 1906 or earlier. If the name inside the maple leaf is Western Stoneware Co. then it's after 1906. Items with the maple leaf marked Western Stoneware Co. Plant 1 were produced at what used to be the Monmouth plant. These are printed marks. I paged through the book but couldn't find out exactly what years the Western Stoneware maple leaf was used or even when they switched from a printed mark to an impressed mark. The book primarily concentrates on old stoneware and I couldn't find that bean pot shape in the few old catalog photos that survived. I believe older bean pots used metal bails rather than handles but I could be wrong. Western continued to produce until 1985 when the name changed again. As far as I know Monmouth did not use impressed marks only printed marks.

Bean pots with the maple leaf mark impressed on the base pop up here on a pretty regular basis and don't sell for very much. The exact age is largely irrelevant. I think the impression on the poster's bean jar is faint because of overuse of the mold. There would be little to be gained by reproducing these. Early stoneware (large crocks, churns, jars, etc.) with a printed mark usually do much better at auction although a lot can depend on the mark itself and condition. For example pieces with a printed maple leaf mark that reads Western Stoneware Co. Plant 7 carry a premium as Plant 7 burned only eight months after the merger. Sorry! At this point I am letting myself get sucked down a stoneware rabbit hole so will wander off now. Anyway, I hope this helps.

 

Since 2019 I've seen a considerable amount of these "Durgin Park" bean pots in antique malls and shops here in Southern Ohio reminding me of this topic. They usually are priced in the $30-50 range.