VMC stands for Virginia Metalcrafters and 9-17 was the company stock number for this design. Your VM trivet was cast in the 1950s-1970s and is a reproduction of the original George Washington trivet discussed in this article. As noted above, the current value of your VM trivet would be $25-$45.

You might be interested in this website dedicated to preserving the history of Virginia Metalcrafters, which closed in December of 2006.
http://www.virginiametalcrafters.com/

Thanks,
Lisa Howell
West Virginia

From 1944 to 1958 the Union Manufacturing Company of Boyertown, PA created a line of trivets, one for each letter of the alphabet. Each trivet was signed with the year of casting and JZH, which stood for John Zimmerman Harner- the owner and manager of the company. Each trivet also had an Alphabet Letter .. if you look closely you should also see the letter “S”.

John Harner created this series in order to perpetuate some of his favorite original antique trivet designs. As you can see from this article, in 1948 your JZH “S” Alphabet Trivet reproduced the George Washington design created for the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876.

The JZH 1948 “S” trivet is fairly common, with a current value of $26 – $50.

JZH Alphabet Trivets are still reasonable in price and fun to collect. Since you already have one, why not begin to collect the others? A good place to look is on eBay … Search under the term “JZH Trivet”. A complete listing, with photos, of the JZH Alphabet Series appears in my newest Trivet book, just released by Collector Books: “The Expanded A-Z Guide To Collecting Trivets.”