Meek Stock No. 82 "Viola"

General Comments
We’ve encountered No. 82 (Viola) a few more times than her immediate predecessor Rosamond (No. 81) although she also ranks among the least common of the “Victorian Ladies.” There is not a lot unique to say about the design itself. It must have been a design from one of Meek’s other lithographers as it does not appear in Sahling’s workbook.

Searches for “Viola” artwork tend to turn up a lot of variations on the violin’s cousin instrument, as well as a lot of purplish flowers (although interestingly no violets given the name association identified below) or women who bear no resemblance to this design. The name Viola is a girl's name of Italian, Latin origin meaning "violet" and has been in usage for a long time; Viola was the heroine of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” (1602). It was reasonably popular (top 50) through the 1911 but has declined in usage precipitously since the 1930's, but remains popular in some other countries like Italy.

The most obviously literary reference to which this design might refer is Shakespeare’ Viola from the comedy Twelfth Night. Like most of Shakespeare’s heroines, Viola is a tremendously likable figure. She has no serious faults, and we can easily discount the peculiarity of her decision to dress as a man, since it sets the entire plot in motion. She is the character whose love seems the purest. Tallulah Bankhead played Viola in a 1937 radio broadcast of the play and more recently, Anne Hathaway played Viola in the Shakespeare in the Park production of Twelfth Night in Central Park in 2009. English actor Eddie Redmayne made his professional stage debut as Viola for Shakespeare's Globe at the Middle Temple Hall in 2002—a long way from his roles in the Harry Potter spin-off movies the Fantastic Beasts film series.

Size & Shape
Despite her scarcity, Viola turns out to be fairly versatile from a format perspective. As a tray, this design shows up most frequently as a convex pie but also as a square (in which case, the actual image is round and has been adapted to a square shape). She also occurs as a curled corner sign and as a Dresden Art Plate. Rims on the trays (both pies and squares) are black with gold advertising text. We have not encountered an example with advertising text on the face of the tray (or sign).

Hager & Price
Hager does discuss this design in a section of his article entitled The Question Marks, apparently never having seen an example with a stock number. However, he correctly estimates that she must have fallen in the 81-84 range (although he does leave it out of his date range table). He does not have it in his catalog since he apparently did not know the stock number. We do not have prices for any brewery trays (despite the fact that we have the one brewery tray referenced below in one of our collections); the few trays we do have, either stock, whiskey or soft drinks are surprisingly inexpensive. The curled corner signs tend to command slightly higher prices. Interestingly, the only brewery example we have observed is a Dresden Art Plate for Hortonville Brewing of Wisconsin; however, like tip trays, we do not track prices for those.