Ken Gross - Guest Columnist - Automotive Cookie Jars
Ken Gross is the former Director of the Petersen Automotive Museum, and a 30-year Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance Chief Class Judge, serving on their Selection Committee. A member of ICJAG, the International Chief Judge Advisory Group, and Chief Judge for the Greenwich Concours. He judges at Amelia Island, Boca Raton, Hilton Head, St. Michaels, and Greenbrier.
His critically acclaimed auto exhibitions have appeared at many major fine art museums. The author of twenty-five books, Ken has received the Automotive Hall of Fame Distinguished Service Citation, the International Motor Press Association’s Ken W. Purdy award, the Motor Press Guild’s Dean Batchelor Award, and the Lee Iacocca award. He collects Sadler OKT42 teapots, Glenn Appleman cookie jars and Ford flathead speed equipment. [email protected] |
Some of Ken's Articles:
Automotive Cookie Jars - Part I
Appleman Ceramic Cookie Jars: The Cars were the Stars... Glenn Appleman’s whimsical, car-shaped ceramic cookie jars were produced by his company, Appleman Autoworks, in Union City, NJ, from 1977 to 1987. Appleman made a few animals in 1970 and then he crafted individual busts of Alfred Hitchcock, Mao-Tse-Tung and Teddy Roosevelt. His first cookie jar was produced in 1977. Pudgy and cute, bigger than your typical cookie jar, each one was hand-made. Painted in bright kiln-fired enamel colors, they average about 17.5" long and 8" high. Each Appleman cookie jar has a snug-fitting lid which serves as the “greenhouse” on closed cars and the passenger compartment with a windshield on open models. They were initially offered at $75, and sold in gift shops, and that price was soon raised to $100. I don’t remember the first time I saw one, but I think it must have been at Jacques Vaucher’s l’art et l’automobile gallery in New York City, in the late 1970s. From memory, it was priced at about $200, which is the equivalent of approximately $750 today, so they were relatively expensive. |
Automotive Cookie Jars - Part II
Appleman Ceramic Cookie Jars: Worth a Lot of Dough... In Automobilia #13, we learned about Glenn Appleman’s whimsical and now very valuable collectable cookie jars. For this second installment, Glenn tells us how the cookie jars were made, and tells some funny stories about the famous people who were his customers — and he hints about a cookie jar to come…! “They were $70-75 apiece when we started, then they went up in price,” he said. “We moved out to New Jersey and we started paying some real expenses, so prices inevitably went up. That was one of the things that eventually made us go out of business. Expenses were spiraling. We got a letter saying that my workman’s comp insurance had to be for a hazardous business, and they tripled the premium. |