Winter-2022

he jar I grew up with was a yellow beehive. It sat on the kitchen counter and was filled with my mom’s home-baked confections. I have childhood memories of rushing home from school, hugging my mom and making a mad dash to the bee- hive to grab a cookie. These memories are connected to us all. It was a love of childhood, sym- bolic of the generation they were made for. Today’s children still love cookies but they are mostly store bought and stored in the pantry wrapped in zip lock bags or plastic containers. They lack the kitchen’s affection for food from the heart. Desserts and baking are still a huge part of the holidays. If one never bakes throughout the year, this is the season that brings out the baker in us all. Every family has their favorite recipes that emerge at this time. My mom’s date bars were only made at Christmas. I can still taste them.That recipe was totally hers. My signature cookies for the holidays are holiday biscotti with cran- berries and pistachios drizzled with white chocolate, toasted coconut lime shortbread with a lime glaze and my feeble effort at making brown butter cookies. There’s a sweet town down the coast from Carmel called Cayucos. My sister Jan and I went antiquing there a few years ago and discovered the Brown Butter Cookie Company.We didn’t even make it to the car.We sat on the wooden bench outside the shop and ate all our cookies and all the ones we were planning to give as gifts. We had to go back in and re- buy the gift cookies again. I have tried and tried to duplicate their recipe, but nothing comes out looking or tasting like those delectable treats. I still crave them all the time. The kitchen is a great place to look if you want to start a collection that will remind you of family time, and nothing is more cheerful and welcoming than seeking out playful vintage cookie jars. They have been around since the late 1700s from England. The British stored pieces of shortbread in opu- lent glass cylinders with silver lids and referred to them as biscuit jars. It wasn’t until the 1920s during the Great Depression, that the iconic cookie jar we know and love burst onto the American scene.Throughout that time, their popularity was con- stant from about the end of World War II to the early 1970s. They started out as utilitarian vessels with screw on lids from Depression glass-era glassmakers, then found their moment during the golden age of American cookie jars in 1940. Potteries soon became inspired by comic book characters from that era, which gave animation and energy to their designs. By the late 1940s and ‘50s, as Americans were having more babies sparked by the American baby boom, the country was eating more and more cookies. 92 C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • W I N T E R 2 0 2 2 COLLECTING T E XT AND PHOTOGRA PHY B Y MAR J OR I E S OW Collecting Vintage Cookie Jars T A selection of jars from the early 1940s through 1990. Cookie jars capture the hearts of collectors with their whimsy.