Franciscan Desert Rose Butter Dish Shakers

FRANCISCAN DESERT ROSE COVERED BUTTER DISH AND ROSEBUD SALT AND PEPPER SHAKERS - FOUR PIECES A Franciscan Desert Rose covered butter dish together with the pattern's rosebud-form salt and pepper shakers, four pieces in all counting the butter base and its lid. The butter dish is the quarter-pound rectangular form, with a shaped tab-end tray bordered in the molded thorny olive vine and a domed cover hand-painted with a large open pink rose and green leaves, topped by a fully modeled pink rosebud finial seated on a green leaf rosette. The shakers are the well-known Desert Rose closed-bud form, molded as a pink rosebud rising out of a green calyx, one pierced with a single hole and the other with two. The butter tray underside carries the later INTERPACE oval mark with the number 2763 and the OVEN SAFE / COLOR FAST line, quoted in full below, which places the dish in the California Interpace run of roughly the mid-1960s through the 1970s. The shakers carry no backstamp, both have unglazed bisque bases with the filler holes open and no corks or stoppers present, and both show tan discoloration and glaze roughness at the tips around the shake holes, with what may be a small area of glaze loss at the tip of one. The butter lid also shows gray scuffing on the dome. All of this is detailed in the condition section below. Serving pieces and accessories are the parts of a Desert Rose service that usually get broken or separated first, so a butter dish with its cover intact and a matched pair of shakers are the lots that fill the real gaps. These pieces round out the other Desert Rose lots in this auction, including the dinner and bread plate lots, saucers, cup and saucer sets, fruit and dessert bowls, serving and vegetable bowls, the oval platter, the divided dish and gravy set, the cookie jar, the bud vase, and the wine goblets. Sold as a lot of four pieces. Description One Franciscan Desert Rose covered butter dish in two parts: a rectangular tray with shaped tab ends and a scalloped, molded thorny-vine border, and a domed rectangular cover with a modeled pink rosebud finial on a green leaf rosette Butter tray measures approximately 7-1/4 inches long and approximately 4-1/4 inches wide, and the dish stands approximately 3-1/4 inches tall with the cover in place and the finial included, all per the tape-measure photographs. In the length and width shots the tape hook rests on the table off the edge of the dish rather than hooked against it, and part of the dish falls outside the frame in one of them, so these figures should be read as close estimates only. Interior tray depth was not measured with the tape, and bidders should verify all dimensions from the photographs Two Franciscan Desert Rose figural salt and pepper shakers in the closed rosebud form, each modeled as a pink bud rising from a green calyx on a small round foot Shakers measure approximately 2-3/4 inches tall per the tape-measure photograph, with the tape stood alongside them on the table. Diameter was not measured with the tape One shaker is pierced with a single hole at the tip and the other with two holes, photographed from directly above Both shakers have unglazed bisque bases with a large open filler hole at the center, and no corks, rubber plugs, or stoppers are present in any photograph Decoration is the Desert Rose pattern in raised relief under a glossy glaze: an open five-petal pink rose with a yellow center speckled in dark green on the butter cover, green leaves in two tones, closed pink buds, and a continuous thorny olive-brown vine molded around the tray border and over the cover base. The shakers are glazed pink over the bud and green over the calyx with the modeling left to carry the design Butter tray backstamp, photographed and enhanced, is the brown oval reading INTERPACE curved along the top ring, Franciscan in script over EARTHENWARE at the center, the copyright and registered symbols, MADE IN U.S.A. along the bottom ring, then 2763 beneath the oval, then OVEN SAFE / COLOR FAST A separate sideways number is struck to the right of the oval on the tray underside. Under enhancement it reads as roughly five characters, approximately 1039 with a trailing letter, blunt and only partly legible, so that reading is offered with reservation The inside of the butter cover carries a small struck number reading approximately U 6 9 6 5, also only partly legible. No oval mark, ring mark, or paper label appears on the cover No printed backstamp, oval mark, ring mark, impressed mark, or paper label is present on either shaker. The figural rosebud shakers were commonly sold unmarked, and the pattern identification here rests on the form, glaze colors, and modeling 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 Gladdin