4, Franciscan Desert Rose Cups and Saucers

FOUR FRANCISCAN DESERT ROSE CUPS AND SAUCERS - EIGHT PIECES, GLADDING, McBEAN & CO. Four Franciscan Desert Rose cups with their four matching saucers, eight pieces in all. The cups are the standard footed teacup form with the pattern's distinctive molded green branch handle, hand-painted with a large open pink rose flanked by green leaves, and the saucers are the scalloped 6 inch form with the molded olive thorny vine running the rim. The saucer undersides carry the brown dotted oval mark with GLADDING, McBEAN & CO. curved through the top ring and a clearly struck number reading 89460, quoted in full below, placing them in the earlier California production before the Interpace era. The cups carry no oval mark at all - only a struck number, a MADE IN U.S.A. line, and a single character on the unglazed-appearing foot, which is normal for Desert Rose cups and is detailed below. Cups and their branch handles are the first casualties in any Desert Rose service, so four intact cups with four matched saucers is the group that actually completes a table. These go directly with the other Desert Rose lots in this sale, including the dinner and bread plate lots, the saucer lot, fruit and dessert bowls, serving and vegetable bowls, the oval platter, the divided dish and gravy set, the covered butter dish and shakers, the cookie jar, the bud vase, and the wine goblets. Sold as a lot of eight pieces, four cups and four saucers. Description Four Franciscan Desert Rose teacups, footed rounded form with a molded and glazed green branch-form handle Four Franciscan Desert Rose saucers, round with a shaped and scalloped rim and a shallow cup ring in the well Cups measure approximately 3-5/8 inches across the rim and stand approximately 2-1/2 inches tall to the rim, both per the tape-measure photographs. In both cup shots the tape hook rests on the table rather than hooked against the cup, and the tape lies across the rim at a slight angle, so these figures should be read as close estimates. Handle projection was not measured with the tape Saucers measure approximately 6 inches in diameter per the tape-measure photograph. The hook again sits on the table alongside the saucer rather than against its rim, so that figure is also a close estimate. Depth was not measured with the tape, and bidders should verify all dimensions from the photographs Count confirmed from the two group photographs, where all four cups and all four saucers are visible as separate paired place settings Decoration is the Desert Rose pattern in raised relief under a glossy glaze: open five-petal pink roses with speckled yellow centers, closed pink buds, green leaves in two tones, and the molded olive-brown thorny vine along the saucer rims. The cup handles are modeled as thorny branch sections and washed in olive green Saucer backstamp, photographed and enhanced, is the brown dotted oval reading GLADDING, McBEAN & CO. curved along the top ring, Franciscan in script over EARTHENWARE at the center, the copyright and registered symbols beneath, MADE IN U.S.A. along the bottom ring, and a small struck character below the oval. A sideways number is struck to the left of the oval reading 89460, legible in the close photograph Cup underside carries no oval or ring mark. It shows a struck number reading approximately 43460, with a sideways MADE IN U.S.A. line beneath it and a single character reading approximately L. The number is blunt and the first two figures are the least certain, so that reading is offered with reservation Attribution note Desert Rose was introduced in 1941 by Gladding, McBean & Co. of Los Angeles, California, and became the best-selling pattern of American dinnerware ever produced, with California manufacture continuing into the mid-1980s. Replacements, Ltd. and the Gladding, McBean Franciscan archive record the mark sequence: the earliest examples carry a dark circular stamp reading Franciscan, Made in California, U.S.A., Hand Decorated with the Gladding, McBean & Co. name, generally assigned to the 1940s into the early 1950s, and the brown dotted oval naming GLADDING, McBEAN & CO. in the top ring, as found on these saucers, follows it. Gladding, McBean was absorbed into the Interpace Corporation in the early 1960s, so INTERPACE ring marks with OVEN SAFE and COLOR FAST lines belong to roughly the mid-1960s through the 1970s, and later Wedgwood-era marks read England or Portugal rather than U.S.A. Cups in this pattern were frequently struck only with a number and a MADE IN U.S.A. line rather than the full oval, because the small footed base left little room for the stamp, so the absence of an oval on the cups is not unusual and does not indicate a different maker. Lehner's encyclopedia of United States pottery marks is the standard reference for the earlier stamps. Struck numbers and letters beside a mark are factory or decorator notations rather than dates. All mark readings, era assignments, form designations, pattern identificat