M&B Stock No. 31

General
No. 31 appears in M&B Catalogue No. 16 (1903) where it is described as “Tea Tray No. 31. Do Not Let Another Season Pass Without a trial order of stock trays, and when you order be sure to mention Tray No. 31, for no order of trays is complete without it.” Not really a description of the design so much as a sales pitch. It is included in the 1903 price list as “No. 31, Lady with Headdress.”

One can see this design being targeted at smaller retailers, particularly clothing stores and may have been created as M&B’s answer to Beach’s No. 12, another lady in a headdress. We speculate this was created in late 1902 or early 1903 as it’s first appeared in a catalogue in No. 16, which includes trays up to No. 35 and the 1903 price list goes up to No. 42.

Shape & Rim & Ad Text
Known tray examples are all oval with the low pie shaped rim and rolled edge. All tray versions show up sporting a red drape rim. We have not encountered any sign versions of this image. Advertising text usually appears on the rim usually in black text, with some occurrences on the face of the tray. One unique exception is the example from Enterprise Brewing of San Francisco, which may be the one use of silver text on a stock tray that we can recall.

Hager & Price
Hager does not discuss this design but does include a picture of it in his catalog.
This design is probably encountered as a blank stock sample more frequently than with advertising text. Although there are a fair number of brewery examples among the advertisers, we have only seen it one time, so prices are most likely robust. Prices for non-brewers and stock samples are fairly inexpensive.