McCOY MAMMY COOKIE JARS

McCOY MAMMY COOKIE JARS
The McCoy Mammy cookie jars are one of the oldest and best known cookie jars in the history of the McCoy pottery company. How could you not fall in love with such a delightful character that has the added bonus of fresh made cookies inside her? The McCoy Mammy cookie jars are made to look like an old time black mammy that is round and jovial. She depicts a perfect picture of how we would describe an old black mammy of times long ago. The McCoy Mammy cookie jars are about 11inches tall and about 8 inches wide. She is standing with her arms folded and each one resting on her robust waistline. She is wearing a long dress that buttons down the front. The dress has a wide collar that supports her round happy little black face with two big white eyes and a cherry red mouth with enlarged lips. The McCoy Mammy cookie jars also show her wearing a red handkerchief around her head. The word “Cookies” are embedded at the bottom of her puffy round skirt. This is a cookie jar to display front and center on your favorite shelf with all of the many treasures that you might be showing off to your friends.

In the late18th century, England was introducing the first cookie jars known as the “biscuit jars”. The American version of the first cookie jars were glass containers with screwed on metal lids. The glass jars were very plain and had no designs only a cylinder shape and often only found in grocery stores. During the Depression Era the American cookie jars started to gain popularity with many people. In the 1930’s the stoneware companies began to make some simple forms for their cookie containers. Brush Pottery Company is considered one of the first companies to manufacture the ceramic cookie jars. The early Brush cookie jars were marked with “Brush U.S.A.” and made in the color green with Cookies written on the front of each cookie jar. Many of the other pottery companies also began making cookie jars with unique designs and shapes to compete in the cookie jar market. The McCoy Mammy cookie jars are a good example of some of the first innovative figures to be produced. Many of the first cookies jars were “cold painted”. The paint on this type of cookie jar would wear off with too much use or rubbing on the paint. Later airbrushing the paint on the cookie jars became a more popular means of a lasting finish.

The Nelson McCoy Sanitary Stoneware Company in Roseville, Ohio was started by J.W. McCoy and his son Nelson McCoy in 1910. Besides making pottery for the area they also incorporated the mining and selling of clay to the area potteries of Roseville. Their success was a great asset to the pottery companies of this region of Ohio. The free land and the vast amounts of clay in this area was a huge factor to the growth of the McCoy Pottery Company. The Nelson McCoy Sanitary Stoneware Company was upgrading equipment and refining the production of the stoneware to a more decorative form of goods and not so much of the functional stoneware. By the mid 1920’s McCoy Pottery Company had purchased a 300 foot long tunnel kiln to make mass quantities of their wares. The McCoy Mammy cookie jar was perhaps fired in this very same kiln. The kiln was the most modern one for this region of Ohio. The Depression was having a negative impact on all of the pottery companies of the area so a co-op was formed called the American Clay Products Company. The co-op helped to unite all the marketing into one program to benefit all the pottery companies’ sales. The Nelson McCoy Pottery Company was the newly elected name for the company in the 1930’s. In the 1940’s the WWII changed the making of pottery to the making of land mines. Land mines were made of clay instead of metal so that they couldn’t be detectable with a metal detector. After the war ended the McCoy Company again went back to making the decorative and functional pottery pieces. The McCoy Mammy cookie jars was one of those artistic creations. The company ended in 1990 after a century of successful pottery manufacturing.

The McCoy Mammy cookie jars are rich in history and one of the most collectible cookies jars with the McCoy name. There are many variations on this grand old mammy but the one that has held its value throughout history is the McCoy Mammy cookie jars. It was one of the first to help evolve the cookie jars that we use and cherish today. If collecting cookie jars is of interest to you then I would highly suggest that you hunt one down for your own. My favorite cookies can only be found in a McCoy Mammy cookie jar.