Meek Stock No. 75 "The Beauty Contest"

General Comments
No. 74, “Beauty Contest” starts the run of “Victorian Lady” designs that continue (with a number of other themes interspersed over the years) through No. 133 in 1913. This particular design seems to suggest that there is a contest of which is more beautiful between the lady and the roses that adorn her hair. It is possible the pink roses are meant to be of the “American Beauty” variety. The American Beauty originated in France, but was imported into the United States in 1886, only becoming generally available in 1888. It went on to become the most popular rose cultivar in the US until the 1920's, when its high price ($2.00 per stem at its introduction in 1888) and propensity to fall victim to fungal diseases caused it to fall in favor.

Beauty contests trace their beginnings back to medieval European festivals such as the English “May Day” where a queen was selected to serve as a symbol of beauty and community ideals. The first modern American pageant was staged by Phineas T. Barnum (of Barnum and Bailey circus fame) in 1854, but his beauty contest was closed down after public protest. Although beauty contests became more common by the 1880s, they were still not considered respectable until 1921 when the first “Miss America” contest was held. Maybe the slightly scandalous association was meant to be part of the appeal with this design?

We cannot find any artistic or literary reference that this work might be based on and none of the examples we’ve seen have carried an artist signature. It does have a 1906 copyright date on it and may be the unnamed stock design for which Sahling references doing the “die lines.”

Size & Shape
All full-sized trays for design No. 75are oblongs size/shapes, all of which have a black rim with gold advertising text on it; Ruff Brewing is the exception with black text on the face. This design also shows up as tip tray, although the design is reversed, and a significant portion of the face is covered with a simple art nouveau design featuring pink roses; advertising text on these usually appears on the black rim. Tip tray sizes carry a stock number of 7 (once Meek started doing a dedicated line of stock tip tray, many replicating full-size stock designs, they received a separate numbering scheme). We have never seen any other shape tray or a sign version of this design.

Hager & Price
Although Hager discusses the “sultry women” designs under a sub-heading of the “The Ladies” he does not include No. 75 in that group, starting instead with No. 78 (Lenore). His criteria seem to be designs that also appeared on Meek’s Dresden Art Plates, which No. 75 does not. He does place this design in the 1906 timeframe and includes it in his catalog. There are several brewery examples (mostly smaller firms) and prices have been surprisingly tame, although most were not in very good condition. Prices for stock samples and non-brewers are about what one would expect based on peer designs of the period. As previously noted, we do not track tip tray prices.