Meek Stock: 67 "Columbine"

General
No. 67 presents a minor mystery—it is one of the 12 chromolithographs from the Thayer folio (La Grande Flora de Colorado de Montana) that Meek acquired in 1901 or 1902 and from which Meek produced designs No. 32 to No. 35 (The Wild Rose; the Evening Primrose; the Tiger Lily; and the Rocky-Mountain Thimble Berry). It carries a 1901 copyright date (date of the original Thayer publication), as well as the No. 67 and the Meek logo, which appears twice—once by the copyright date and once by the stock number. To our knowledge, this and no. 68 are the only designs where the Meek symbol appears twice.

So, was this the intended fifth design that M&B catalogue No. 16 mentions but didn’t actually include? Why, after a couple of intervening years did Meek decide to issue another floral design when it does not appear that the previous four were tremendously successful given the infrequency with which they are encountered? Based on the description in catalog No. 16 (“…we bought the copyright ownership…”), Meek must have owned the rights to reproduce the image. Given the designs immediately preceding and following (with the exception of No. 68) it seems like quite a departure. It apparently wasn’t any more successful than the previous flower designs as we’ve only ever seen a single example of this design.

Shape & Rim & Ad Text
The only example we’ve encountered is a 13” convex pie tray. The rim features a simple butterfly pattern which is somewhat more elaborate than the 4 flower designs issued early (No. 32 to No. 35). Advertising text on this example is in dark blue and appears on the face of the tray to the left of the flowers. We suspect this design would have appealed more to smaller retailers and likely would have had advertising text printed on the back.

Hager & Price
This design does not appear in Hager’s article. As mentioned above, we’ve only seen a single example, which was for an ice cream manufacturer; the price modest, especially given the scarcity of this design.