Meek Stock No. 76 "The Sheep Fold"

General Comments
No. 76 represents both a mystery and a bit of curiosity among the stock designs of this timeframe. The mystery involves the copyright date of 1904 which appears on the tray when there are several predecessor trays in the catalog order with 1906 dates and with No. 78, we start hitting designs with 1907 copyright dates. If this was a design licensed from an artist or illustrator, we’ve never encountered an example with a signature and a variety of searches have not turned up an original artwork that this design might have been based on. It turns out that sheep are a surprisingly frequent subject in artwork, but we could not find this particular image. The alternative would be that this design was created in-house and was perhaps used in another media (i.e., a stock calendar) but we have not been able to find evidence of such, including a careful review of Sahling’s workbook. For some reason this design was created and intended to be used in 1904 since the copyright was obtain, but never put in use.

The curiosity is the very agricultural orientation of the design, a departure from pretty much all of the preceding Tuscarora/M&B/Meek stock designs. Although some animals had featured in designs up to this point, they had mostly been horses whose appearance was more inline with the perquisites of upper-class privilege than work contexts. Exactly who was this design meant to appeal too? A little digging into census data reveals that in 1900 approximately 36% of Americans were employed in agriculture and 60% lived in rural areas. While they would not have been direct customers, many of Meek’s customers, such as the small retailers served a rural clientele at whom this design may have been aimed.

Size & Shape
We have only seen this design twice—once as a sample stock oblong tray and once as a flat sign that appears to be and unpressed oblong. In both cases the “rim” is a woodgrain design with a gold and black edge. The sign (West Disinfecting Co) has gold advertising text on the rim and black advertising copy on the face of the tray, including the words “Sheep Dip” highlighted in gold (the only time we can think when Meek did this on a stock design). Woodgrain rims on stock design was unusual for Meek, although later American Art Works trays did use woodgrain for the entire tray.

Hager & Price
Hager does not include No. 76 anywhere in his article, even the date range table for the catalog indicating he probably never encountered this design. We only captured price information for the sign version for West Disinfecting Co which was surprisingly robust for a better than average condition instance. We recall the stock sample to go for a comparatively high price, although not in the range that one would expect for a brewery.