Treasures in your attic: Bucking-bronco plates belong to bygone dinnerware era

Q. I collect dinnerware with Western themes and images. I own six of these brown plates with a tan body and decorated with a cowboy on a bucking bronco. They are marked “Holman Company” on the back. Do they have any value — even if they were mass-produced? Thank you.

A. There was a time when many companies in the food-service business thought it feasible to have dinnerware made to meet their needs and design specifications.

Many Asian restaurants, for example, once had very identifiable china made for them that might include such things as crossed bamboo with the restaurant name and some calligraphy, or perhaps the image of a dragon, a pagoda or a full Asian-inspired scenic view. Sports teams had dinnerware made for use in stadium restaurants. Amusement parks did the same, as did department-store and drugstore restaurants and lunch counters.

Companies with executive dining rooms — such as General Motors, 20th Century Fox and Metropolitan Life Insurance — had dinnerware made with their logos. Airlines, railroads and ships had dinnerware made with distinctive designs and company insignia, and many of these items are avidly collected today. Even though most of these dinnerware patterns were “mass-produced,” they are extremely collectible today — and some can be quite valuable.

Restaurant dinnerware with Western and Southwestern themes were largely made from the 1940s through the early 1960s. Of course, pieces that were made a bit later can be found as well. The two big names in Western-themed dinnerware are Tepco, or Technical Porcelain and Chinaware Company of El Centro, Calif. (in business from 1922 to the 1970s), and Wallace China Company of Vernon, Calif. (in business from 1931 to around 1964).

When we first saw the photograph of G.C.’s plates, we thought they might actually be Tepco’s “Branding Iron — Bronco” pattern, but a quick comparison disabused us of that notion.

The transfer-printed patterns are a bit similar, but the Tepco piece has a bronco buster being bucked around in front of a fence, while the Holman example has the spirited horse and rider among rocks and cactuses.

The borders are also similar, but the Holman variety does not have the ox yoke, cowboy hat, saddle, steer head and branding irons seen on Tepco pieces. Instead, the Holman border is simpler and has images of the marks left by a branding iron.

Unfortunately, the Holman Company is one that is virtually unknown to many collectors of American dinnerware, but this firm is discussed in Corrine Brown’s “Come and Get It!” Holman was located in Frisco, Texas, and in business from 1947 to 1970. The company bought the dinnerware pre-made but undecorated, added the decal decoration and sold these embellished pieces to restaurants and hotels.

Holman also sold chef’s hats, barbecue aprons and T-shirts — and its fledgling pottery division was relatively short-lived, lasting only about 10 years, from 1947 to 1957 or so. Not many of these Holman Western-themed plates are in circulation; just one of these is worth, for retail purposes, around $100 to $125 in excellent condition.

Ÿ Contact Helaine Fendelman and Joe Rosson at Treasures in Your Attic, P.O. Box 18350, Knoxville, TN 37928.