LATE 1800's,EARLY 1900's,LADY TELEPHONE OPERATOR BOWL!!

Home > Worthopedia – Price Guide > Tools >

Terms and Conditions for using our site

LATE 1800's,EARLY 1900's,LADY TELEPHONE OPERATOR BOWL!!

Sold For:

or Sign In to see What it's worth.

Sold Date: 04/24/2007
Channel: Online Auction
Source: eBay
Category: Tools

Up for auction is a small serving or cereal size bowl from the late 1800's or early 1900's with a very unusual pattern of a woman telephone operator wearing an old horn shape style head set, on one end of the bowl. The remainder of the bowl is trimmed with the very tops of telephone poles showing 2 old style green glass or ceramic insulators with telephone wire connected in between. I mostly sell pottery and I did not put this piece into any of the pottery categories. This is the 1st time I have entered into phone collectibles and I hope you old phone collectors can appreciate this piece. It is an old piece, please take my word for it and based on the type of decoration, I am dating back to the era it depicts. This bowl is unmarked and I have found nothing out trying to research it. I can tell you that whole lot of porcelain and semi-porcelain china dinnerware was not marked in those days. This has to be one of the most unique dinnerware patterns I have ever seen. It would not be restaurant or hotel china and this is unfortunately the only piece I have. I can only think this might be from a set of commemoritive china that was made for someone involved with the old A.T. and T. Telephone Company or perhaps a telephone company executive had a set specially made for himself. I guess it could also have come from a phone company cafeteria for the employees. I know that t used to be all kinds of jobs that no longer exist with the phone company and t were many more people needed to manually work the lines, like operators for instance. The phone company would have everything and everyone in one building doing their jobs except for the line crew. This could create a need for a cafeteria and that could account for this type of decorated dinnerware. All I can really do is speculate. This is a good grade of china and this piece has no chips or cracks. T is only some light ware to the transfer pattern itself, but as you can see from my photos it is still a very vivid and clear. T is a bit of discoloration on the bowl, but it is hardly noticable. The bowl does not have any glaze crazing either. Glaze crazing is the tiny little crackle looking lines that can form in the glaze of an old piece of pottery. Many times when this does occur, staining from dirt and food will become embedded right into the piece itself. This bowl does have some minor scratching from use, but that is to be expected. This truly has to be one very unique early century telephone collectible. This bowl is 5 3/4 inches across the top and the base rim diameter is about 2 3/4 inches. It stands off the table top at about 1 3/4 inches tall and it weighs 9 1/2 ounces. This bowl will make a great display piece on a bowl stand and I have to believe it is scarce if not rare. This will also make a great one of a kind conversation piece for your collection, so don't miss out on this one. THANKS FOR LOOKING AND BE SURE TO CHECK OUT MY OTHER LISTINGS! Thanks to an email I recieved, I now know that this bowl was made for the Lilienthal Crockery Company of Atlanta Georgia around 1912 by one of the Maddock Pottery Companies of Trenton, New Jersey. T was more than one, all family related and their history is too extensive to go into This same Maddock family was also directly related to the Staffordshire, England Maddock Pottery Family. I must add that I am perplexed as to how I missed the other listing during my research for this bowl. This bowl is not marked, but I am sure it is the same as the other bowl that will be going off about 2/12 days from this writing. I also acquired it from an estate in a town that is a suburb of Atlanta, so this all makes sense now and substantiates this piece as well. I also want to add that I did add on that 2nd category in pottery and I do not think anyone can blame me, but I do not want to be looked at as a liar. Since this piece has a bid, I can not revise anything in my original description. On Apr-18-07 at 05:13:42 PDT, seller added the following i...