Treasures: Nice return on investment

Dear Helaine and Joe: I am enclosing a picture of a jardiniere that my mother purchased around 1942. Marked "Roseville," it is in perfect condition. It has an $8.50 price listed on the bottom, and I am wondering what the value might be now. — M.K.K., Taft, Texas

Dear M.K.K.: Although the Roseville Pottery Company closed its doors in 1954, collectors today are interested in its products — even though many of the prices have declined in recent years.

George Young, who previously had held a number of jobs, including sewing-machine salesman and schoolteacher, incorporated the company in 1892 at the old J.B. Owens Pottery factory in Roseville, Ohio.

The first products were utilitarian wares, such as flowerpots and stoneware storage jugs. Roseville met with initial success and began to buy other pottery makers in the area. It acquired its first facility in nearby Zanesville, Ohio, in 1898.

Roseville started making more ambitious art wares around 1900 under the moniker "Rozane," a combination of the place names Roseville and Zanesville, where the company had its manufacturing facilities. By 1910, however, Roseville had left the town of Roseville for good, and its entire operation moved to Zanesville.

Today, its fine-art pottery lines are the most desired by collectors, but around the time of World War I, the company abandoned them in favor of making "commercial art wares," which were cheaper to produce and more affordable to the public.

These were essentially molded wares with little handwork involved in their manufacture, and Roseville made a wide range of these types of products. One line is named "Clematis" after the flowers shown vividly and profusely on the pottery's surface, and this is the pattern of the jardiniere and pedestal owned by M.K.K.

This line debuted in 1944 — so it could not have been purchased in 1942 — and featured brown, green or blue artifacts. The green and brown varieties are more interesting to collectors than the blue, and the piece in today's question appears to be blue.

Roseville made a variety of shapes in this pattern, and these include everything from hanging baskets and wall pockets to vases, bowls, flower frogs, cream pitchers, sugar bowls, teapots, cookie jars, ewers and, yes, jardinieres and pedestals. Although M.K.K. did not say, we suspect this set is marked with the numbers 667-8, meaning that the bowl is 8 inches tall and the pedestal 17 inches high.

Reportedly, collector interest in this pattern is increasing, but in these difficult times in the antiques and collectibles world, this does not mean that the prices are necessarily rising. Still, Roseville jardinieres and pedestals are desirable — and a little hard to find complete and in good condition — so this set is now worth considerably more than the $8.50 paid back in the mid-1940s.

For insurance-replacement purposes, this piece — without chips, cracks or unsightly glaze rubs — should be valued between $1,000 and $1,200.

Helaine Fendelman and Joe Rosson are the authors of "Price It Yourself" (HarperResource, $19.95). Contact them at Treasures in Your Attic, P.O. Box 27540, Knoxville, TN 37927. E-mail them at treasures(at)knology.net