M&B Stock No. 140 "At your Service"

General Comments
No. 140 is the second design with the title “At Your Service” (the previous one is No. 117) and also features a dog and horses, although this time instead of the small Jack Russell-like dog of No. 117, it is a larger breed that somewhat resembles a cross between a St. Bernard and Bernese Mountain Dog, but isn’t quite either. We are not well versed in dog breeds and our attempts at researching popular breeds of the 1910s, working/farm dogs of the era, and extinct breeds failed to turn up any potential candidates. Perhaps it is simple drawn from the artist’s imagination. What is likely is that such a dog’s function on a farm would be livestock protection.

This is the last rural or farm themed design in the catalog after a number of them over the years, many of them featuring horses (No. 38, No. 70, No. 88, No. 90, No. 100, No. 117, No. 136). In retrospect, it is evident that most of these horses are chestnut colored with a “star” or white spot on the forehead (No. 136 is the exception, with a strip or blaze of white that extends the length of the horse’s nose). What is unusual here is the second white horse (there is a white horse on No. 38 too). Although there are a number of white horse breeds they are somewhat specialized and tend to have been purpose bred, such as the Lippizans of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, Austria. The most likely candidate is the American Cream Draft horse, which is currently the only draft horse breed with origins in the United States who were often employed in agricultural roles.

There is no artist signature on examples we have seen, nor does Sahling have an entry in his workbook for this design. However, this work supposedly has been attributed to R. Atkinson Fox, a prolific artist and illustrator active from 1900-1930s who sold works for commercial advertising, appearing in Vintage Illustration 1900-1960 by Rick & Charlotte Martin. Fox was commissioned by art print publishers to produce art for advertising, calendars, jigsaw puzzles, postcards, and posters. Calendar companies often contracted with him directly. Fox’s strength was natural scenes, often with an Art Deco flare and he is known to have painted horses, including this very similar scene intitled "Two Pairs" below left and "Spic and Span" below right.

Size, Shape and Advertising Placement
All three examples we’ve seen of this design have been the new, narrow oval shape. They feature black rims and the one example with advertising text appeared in gold (one had an overpainted rim so we cannot be sure of its rim and advertising text colors). None had text on the face

Hager & Price
Hager stopped commenting on individual trays after No. 136, but he does not have this design in either his date of introduction table or his catalog. Given it’s rarity, we speculate that he never ran across an example. The one brewery example, which was in very good condition went for low four figures, although this was several years ago and we’d expect it to command a high price today. The average condition stock sample only realized low double figures, while the example with the overpainted rim went in the low three figures.