Posted 8 years ago
UkeBum
(1 item)
Some 50 years ago, while cleaning out my grandparent's home in Daly City, California, I acquired this piece. It's been packed away ever since. It may be of interest to you -- or someone you know who loves San Francisco history, beer, and sexy 19th century ladies in Victorian swimwear.
This is a rare piece of breweriana and San Francisciana. Breweries put out lots of tin trays and "tip" trays, but according to major collectors of breweriana that I've been able to contact, no one has seen a Haviland Limoges hand painted brewery related plate before.
The Chicago Brewery in San Francisco was a pre-prohibition, 19th century brewery on Pine Street, on the corner of Larkin. The address is discernible at the bottom of the plate, which reads "1420 - 1424 Pine Street SF" when held at an angle in good light.
The back mark of the plate is Haviland, so this is a "white wear" plate sent to San Francisco from Limoges, France. This back mark was in use from 1888 to 1896.
The Chicago Brewery was located in San Francisco, first from 1876 to 1906, a division of The San Francisco Breweries, Ld. My research shows the Brewery burned in the 1906 fire on April 19th, sometime between 2:30 and 6 p.m. A fellow named Lawrence Joseph Kennedy submitted a step-by-step, fire-by-fire report for a master's thesis in 1908 at University of California at Berkeley, and the San Francisco Historical Society has kindly published his "dissertation" online, so tracking the fire to Pine Street at Larkin is easily done.
Interestingly, there are reports of at least one soldier getting drunk on a brewery's product (not stated which brewery, but he couldn't have been the only drunken fire fighter!), and other reports that brewery cisterns were pumped for water to fight the fires.
The fire jumped Van Ness approximately from half block south of Bush to just below Clay -- the Chicago Brewery might still be with us today if it had been at Pine and Gough! But let's not cry over spilt suds.
There are numerous bits of additional documentation, including a photograph of the engine room of the Chicago Brewery in ruins in American Brewers' Review, January - June, 1906, in a very descriptive article published May 15th of that year by "The California Promotion Committee entitled "In Stricken Frisco." (Sorry, I know, I know, apologies to dear departed SF Chronicle columnist Herb Caen -- don't call it Frisco.)
Add this all up, including the bathing costume, and the plate dates to the 1890s, although one can't determine when the Haviland plate was painted. It could have sat around a while, but we know for sure it made it's way from the Chicago Brewery before April, 1906!
My research is not yet complete. Breweriana people have been most generous in their help, as have Haviland collectors.
I LOVE porcelain like this! What a great thing to find.