Old Partagas ceramic "jar" - mystery solved - big score!

[BarryNY]

Hi Mates - I'm told this could date to late 1800's - early 1900's....who knows.  Are any of you collectors of this type of item and/or have any idea as to its value...it's about 7" tall? 

No cigars included LOL......

 

 

bottom marking very faded.....

[shlomo]

Im no expert, but if that jar is 100+ years old and has never been retouched and is in that mint shape......well, im skeptical as is my nature. Are there web marks throughout and on the lid, or just underneath?

Quick google search suggests it is a Pickman Sevilla jar from Spain dating to the 1940s.

[PatrickEwing]

Interesting to see an almost identical predecessor to the Monte3 Sevilla release from this year. 

[Smallclub]

TMK these jars (Partagas, RA, etc.) have been re-issued several times in the 20th century…

[Smoke6]

Regardless, that is a marvelous jar for any collector.  I'd proudly display that in my collection

[jrusso14]

can't offer much in terms of value of the item but it really is a good looking piece

[BarryNY]

6 hours ago, shlomo said:

Im no expert, but if that jar is 100+ years old and has never been retouched and is in that mint shape......well, im skeptical as is my nature. Are there web marks throughout and on the lid, or just underneath?

Quick google search suggests it is a Pickman Sevilla jar from Spain dating to the 1940s.

Hi and thanks for your time and the lead.

YES - upon a close up magnified look - the bottom says La Cartuja De Sevilla...Pickman S.A. (I'm reading about the company now)

YES - there are "web" marks like on the bottom throughout the entire jar both inside/outside...very faint....I'll assume that's a good thing vis a vis confirms older versus replica?

So here's the story:

While shopping CraigsList for a cabinet humidor I come across pictures (the ones posted above) of this jar and the seller lives 15 minutes from my 90 year old mother-in-law's where we go every Weds for family dinner.  Like you guys - I'm feeling by the condition and look - I just can't pass this up so I call and I meet him last night.

Needless to say I didn't even try to haggle over the asking price...the sellers were my age and the wife said it was her deceased Dad's and they weren't into cigars and had no use for it in the house...........

And the best part was: $60.  I paid, grabbed it and ran like a bat out of hell back to the family dinner!!!

 

[BarryNY]

HOLY SH-T - what a score....1920's......look at this from a website that looks up old auctions.  This was for a Ramon Allones but mine is the EXACT same type from the RA pictures shown...read at bottom of blurb they made it for RA and Partagas.......:

You are bidding on an AUTHENTIC and VERY RARE ITEM of CUBAN TOBACCO and CIGAR HISTORY Memorabilia. Up for auction is this ANTIQUE and GENUINE CIGAR PORCELAIN HUMIDOR especially made for prestigious Cuban Cigar brand „ RAMON ALLONES “, in the early 1920s. The RAMON ALLONES brand, founded in 1845 by Ramón and Antonio Allones, is one of the oldest and most luxurious of all Cuban cigar brands - being one of the GREAT TRADITIONAL Cuban HAVANA brands. This Superb HISTORICAL TOBACCO MEMORABILIA item was made in the 1920s by HIGH QUALITY PORCELAIN manufacturer „Pickman S.A.“ (bottom is branded) of La Cartuja, Sevilla in Spain – numbered “202”. (Background: En el siglo XIX, la Fábrica de loza de la Cartuja de Sevilla, conocida también como cerámica de Pickmann, creada con el fin de que maestros londinenses, aplicados en las técnicas inglesas de estampación, enseñaran a los artesanos andaluces el arte de decorar la loza, diseñó y amasó modelos exclusivos para los reyes, después de ser, en 1871, instituida por Amadeo de Saboya). This TYPE of PORCELAIN HUMIDOR was specially designed by PICKMAN S.A. in a LIMITED EDITION for Cuban Cigar brands „PARTAGAS“ and „RAMON ALLONES“, the most famous and biggest Cuban cigar emporiums in Cuba of Pre Castro era and one of the worldwide oldest cigar factories, too. This is both - a BEAUTIFUL and ANTIQUE

• SOLD FOR:$611.00
• ITEM CATEGORY:Alcohol & SmokingSOURCE:eBay
• SOLD DATE:Mar 22, 2013
• CHANNEL:Auction House

 

 

[jrusso14]

Good haul there, brother.

[Jeremy Festa]

Cool

[BarryNY]

It's gonna look purdy....real purdy....in the new tower humi that's on the way - unless it gets evicted 'cause I need more room for the boxes LOL......not!

[Sean3]

Nice score indeed!

[archosaur]

Beautiful piece, great score!

[cigarsmoke]

Very Nice!!!!!

[QuaiDorkay]

Love it!

[chriswalker]

I bought this book years ago and searched many antique shops hoping to see that jar...great find amigo!!!

[IPORTER]

Very nice. Thanks for sharing!!

[JohnnyO]

That's a $800 jar

[Fugu]

Great score. I guess next time you visit your in-laws, seller deserves a nice bottle of rum or wine....

[BarryNY]

22 minutes ago, Fugu said:

Great score. I guess next time you visit your in-laws, seller deserves a nice bottle of rum or wine....

Good thought - But the dilemma in that is...they would probably feel awful knowing that the value was over 10x what they sold it to me for.......my wife says she wouldn't want to know and it would be "odd" to do anything else for them....they surely would suspect something was up....better to leave well enough alone.  I sent them text after findingthis info out thanking them again and telling them how much I loved it...they said "enjoy".  Enjoy I will.

[BarryNY]

11 hours ago, chriswalker said:

I bought this book years ago and searched many antique shops hoping to see that jar...great find amigo!!!

WOW - that jar made the cover of the book.  Amazing.  I Just bought a copy of that book now!

[NSXCIGAR]

This appears to be one for sale currently from Italy on eBay, although the bottom and the paint scheme seems to be different for the OP's, the Perelman book and this listing:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/GIARA-PARTAGAS-PICKMAN-SEVILLA-1930s-JAR-HUMIDOR-CIGAR-/112145966358?hash=item1a1c6ba516%3Ag%3A-X4AAOSwAuZX1pJs&nma=true&si=bCwWUiS4LegrVuBaJVgC7iAiUTo%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

[CanuckSARTech]

Sorry, just jumping in on this old post now, after stumbling across it.  I have to laugh sometimes a bit, especially when irony pops up - I was just talking about these jars somewhere else recently.

For the O.P, that eBay listing / seller - I had contacted him before, a while back, when I was doing my own jar's homework.  I saw a few listings, where he was advertising $800-$1100 antique jars, that were from the 1890's or 1920's, just depending on what his listing happened to say at the time.  After I learned some of the below info, I tried to tell him he needs to look at the historical specifics of stuff like this, and stop misleading buyers.  Frankly, he told me he didn't care about cigars, and just wanted to get max profit, and "figured" they were at least that old, and didn't care to clarify / verify.

For these jars...the "Talavera" jars are the 1920's blue ones; the "Sevilla" jars are the mid-50's through to mid-70's jars.  Looking through Amir's "Partagas: The Book" and MRN's Encyclopaedia, there's a lot that's unsure / uncatalogued for these jars, but you can put a few things together from there too.  And that's where I had started initially a while back.

But when I happened to stumble across one of these jars, without a lid, and snagged it up, I wanted to know more.  I found that there's not a ton published on them.  So, I had e-mailed and called the Sevilla / Cartuja ceramics people in Spain a while back about it, to try to get more clarification.  The gist of it is this...

These brown Sevilla jars, were produced primarily in Spain and also in Cuba by Pickman.  They used a series of different stylizations of the logos, which was their internal record kinda of what factory it came from, what timeline, etc.

A few main things as it relates specifically to these brown Sevilla jars....

1. There are 1950's pre-revolution jars, late 1950's to early 60's jars, and then mid-to-late 1960's and 70's post-revolution jars.  The main difference is that, generally, the 1950's to early 1960's pre-revolution jars have the extra painted line around the circumference of the jar within the indent going around the bottom of the jar body.  And as you can see from the OP's picture, and that of the cover of the Perelman's book, there's a fair bit of variance as to where precisely in there that line is painted.  That has to do with the variance from whatever factory it was made.  The late 50's to early 60's "in between" jars are all a muddled mess.
2. The jars from mid-to-late 60's and 70's jars have a plain / non-floral-decorated lid.  And those post-revolution jars don't have the painted line around that lower indent.
3. The Cuban-made jars were more in quantity (but perhaps not in quality, as they seemed to break apart easier), and had a slightly "crisper" and sharper detail for the dark-brown logo-and-artwork appliques.  The Sevilla-made ones were not quite as many (cheaper to produce in Cuba, and no need for shipping), and had a bit more of that glazing "crackle", but were a bit more sound structurally to the material.
4. It is / was VERY common to see a pre-revolution 50's/60's jar, sold in the post-revolution 60's/70's, but paired up with the newer / later post-revolution 60's/70's lids.  The lids themselves were all quite a bit thinner and weaker than the actual jars, and not many have survived over the years.
5. The logo on the bottom surface of the jars - this is how Pickman's can make a general guess as to the age and origin of the jar itself.  I was told that this is primarily a guess, as there were no hard and fast rules.  However, the "standard" Pickman logo with the anchor was the one used on the Sevilla made jars from Spain throughout the 50's, and then there was a slight difference with those (bigger or smaller anchor, and different layout and slight size- and font-difference for the text in the logo) which generally illustrated late 50's through to mid-60's (1963 or so was what I was told, after the start of the embargo), and then it changed again throughout the 70's potentially (depending on the factory).  The Pickman eagle logo was primarily for contracted-type work, stuff not made in Sevilla directly, and would likely have been on the Cuban-made stuff primarily.
6. Any extra numbers or writing on the bottom surface of the jars ("202" or other things like that) apparently were part of some late 60's and primarily 70's production.  I was not given an explanation as to what it meant, what all was part of this, whether it was Sevilla-made versus Cuba-made, etc.
7. They also made a guestimate statement saying that the Cuban-made ones seemed to have a slightly different colour / pigmentation variant from the painted lines compared to the logo/floral applique (how you can see a shade difference between the applique, and the extra painted straight lines on the very bottom circumference of the jar, and around the lid knobs).  The Sevilla-made ones seemed to have a more exact shade match almost.  No explanation was given on this either, about why or how.

My jar at home doesn't have the extra painted line around the bottom belly indent, and had the late 50's to mid-60's logo.  So, I was told it was likely a '58-or-so until '63 variant, made directly at Sevilla.

Guessing from the info I was told, and the limited info that's out there, it'd be reasonable to say that the OPs jar could be a 50's one, looking to be pre-revolution ('58/'59), and made in Cuba.  Also looks to be in great condition, all said too.  A proud find, and at a very reasonable price (I found mine for just under $100, without the lid).

 

 

[BarryNY]

Thanks for the update.  This is what I got from the factory awhile ago...Bottom line gorgeous item for $60.  Never selling it so the value is priceless!

 

From: Estudio - La Cartuja de Sevilla [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, November 04, 2016 6:52 AM
To: barryny
Subject: Re: information on an OLD item of yours

 

Dear Barry,

The correct bottom mark is this and the piece is from 1932 to 1965. 

Regards!

[riijoo]

Hi there,

We found this humidor in Germany. Can someone help us with the "production date" and the worth of the jar? The condition is not too bad. It has cracks on the surface and looks kind of used on the inside.

I read everything of the a.m. but still not too sure :-)

Thanks!