Meek Co. Stock No. 56 "Purity"

General
It is hard to say with any certainty which was the first stock design to be produced by Meek following the name change from M&B in late 1904/early 1905, especially with the gap between No. 51 and this design. As far as we can tell we’ve never encountered an example of this design that carries any indication it was ever produced by M&B. A few examples have carried a 1903 copyright date; however, that is not a reliable indicator of when a design was put into production, as there are known examples where there was a time lag between copyright and production.

The sudden appearance of copyright dates on trays seems to be the result of a 1903 Supreme Court decision in the case of Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing Company, which held that advertisements were protected by copyright and asserting the precedent that commercial speech can be protected by copyright. In this case, the Great Wallace Show (a traveling circus) initially hired the Courier Lithographing Company (where Bleistein was employed) to design and produce chromolithographic posters to promote the circus. When Wallace ran out of the initial production, he hired Donaldson Lithographing to manufacture copies. Donaldson’s position was that they were not eligible for copyright protection because they were “just advertisements,” but the Court ended up determining differently. Perhaps this is why we start seeing copyright dates on stock designs for several years, which then apparently became unnecessary with the revision of the Copyright Act of 1909—when the mere publication with identification of the manufacturer was deemed sufficient for copyright protection. All of which sheds light onto reason we may have seen the same stock design image (eg., M&B No. 23, Primavera) as well as non-stock designs (eg, West End Brewing, Utica NY lady liberty with key and eagle) show up by different manufacturer marks.

Shape & Rim & Ad Text
Known tray examples are all oval, with the low pie shaped rim and rolled edge. All sport a plain red rim without any additional embellishments beyond advertising text, which on trays always shows up in black print. There are almost as many examples of TOC sign versions of this design, all of which feature an oval image surrounded by faux woodgrain usually with gold advertising text.

Hager & Price
Hager includes this design in his catalog, but it isn’t discussed in his article. The few brewery examples tend to go for solid, but not spectacular prices. Prices for TOC signs versions in better than good condition tend to go for significantly higher prices than tray versions, regardless of issuer.