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Ah, the Ladies Favorite! Not just the Ladies Favorite, but one of
mine also. As you can see, the normal closure for the Ladies favorite
is the standard Willoughby stopple, although several other closures are
known also. This particular example is a half gallon.
The Ladies Favorite, as you might guess from the dress of the woman on
front, was made in the Civil War Era. I love the self reference of the
lady holding a Ladies Favorite out apparently in delight at the amazing
canning abilities of the jar.
This is one of the great jars in my opinion. The crudity of the jar
is perfectly balanced against it's intricate design so that the two
reinforce each other rather than detract. Any figural jar is
especially interesting and one showing a lady in full civil war regalia is
doubly so. The willoughby stopple tops it all off. What a great
jar!
I should say something about the Willoughby stopple and the trade in them
here. They are rare and desired enough to create a trade specifically
in stoppples. I believe that the easily obtained quart sizes can be
gotten for around $100 these days but the much more difficult to locate HG
and especially pint sizes are very difficult to locate and bring very high
prices.
Closures in general are avidly sought out by collectors and I think their
prices have nowhere to go but up. Normally, closures are bought to
complete a jar and once a closure does get paired with a jar, that closure
is essentially off the market so that the supply of closures is
monotonically decreasing (to use a math term) which means that the prices
are monotonically increasing. I don't deal too much in closures but I
think from a profit point of view, it's a good thing to get into.
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