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A cold cream jar from a Rome, New York privy and the Larkin Company behind it

A plain white cold cream jar dug out of a privy in Rome, New York, links to Frank Lloyd Wright, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. Fort Stanwix National Monument holds the jar in its artifact collection, and a Park Service article follows the trail from the jar to the Larkin Company of Buffalo.

A small milk glass cold cream jar with threading at the top for a lid

The milk glass jar. NPS photo.

The jar

Archeologists excavating a 19th-century privy in Rome in the 1970s found the small milk glass jar. It was made in a three-piece mold after 1870 and has no lid. The bottom is embossed with "MODJESKA COLD CREAM, BUFFALO, NY" and "LARKING SOAP CO", which told the archeologists what it held. The Modjeska products, a line of cosmetics the Larkin Company began making in 1886, were named for Helena Modjeska, a Shakespearean actress who performed in New York. The company's founder, John Larkin, saw her perform and liked her so much that he named the line for her.

The bottom of the jar with embossed lettering

Bottom of the milk glass jar, with embossed lettering (Fort Stanwix Museum Collection). NPS photo.

The Larkin Idea

John Larkin was born in Buffalo in the 1840s, worked in his twenties for a food producer and took business and bookkeeping courses, and at 30 started a soap manufacturing company. His brother-in-law, Elbert Hubbard, was the first salesman. The line grew from one soap to nine within five years. In the 1880s the company changed how it sold, under the name "The Larkin Idea": on Hubbard's recommendation it gave "premiums", a gift with purchase, and it shifted from direct sales to catalogs under the philosophy "From Factory to Family", which ended its salesmen by 1885. Premiums began as collectible postcards and handkerchiefs and grew to lamps, chairs and the popular oak Chautauqua Desk. For $10 a customer got a variety pack of soaps that was advertised as enough for an average family for a year, plus a piece of furniture free.

A newspaper advertisement for Larkin Company premiums featuring the Chautauqua Desk

Newspaper advertisement for Larkin premiums featuring the Chautauqua Desk, Middlebury Register, December 11, 1896.

The company relied on outside suppliers, including Oneida Limited for silver-plated spoons, and then began making premiums itself, including furniture and pottery. Its pottery side was Buffalo Pottery, called Buffalo China from the 1940s, and Oneida Limited bought it in 1983.

Artist, architect and the Lusitania

Hubbard left in the 1890s and in 1895 helped found the Roycroft artists community in East Aurora, New York, whose members included William Wallace Denslow, the illustrator of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900 and written by L. Frank Baum of Chittenango, New York. Larkin thrived without him and needed a headquarters, and John Larkin agreed to give architect Frank Lloyd Wright his first commercial commission. The Larkin Administration Building, finished in 1904, held 1,800 employees and used natural light and fresh air in Wright's organic style. It was demolished in 1950, and a piece of a brick pier survives.

A 19th-century photograph of John Larkin, a bearded man with glasses in a suit

A 19th-century photograph of John Larkin (public domain).

The early 20th century was the company's heyday: its catalog grew from 115 items to over 1,000, second only to Sears in variety. Hubbard, by then a well-known writer and publisher, died in May 1915 when the RMS Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-boat off Ireland, killing almost 1,200 people, with his second wife among them. About a decade later John Larkin died at 80, and despite his son's efforts, including a food line and gas stations, profits fell. The company was sold in the 1940s and closed in 1962.

The object

The emptied jar was thrown into a privy, where it stayed for over 90 years until Park Service archeologists dug it up, then was washed, cataloged and stored for another 40 years. The Park Service says it led from a plain jar through a history of manufacturing, retail and consumerism, and of New York communities, business innovations and artistic revolutions.

Sources

National Park Service, Fort Stanwix National Monument, "Cold Cream Jar" (https://www.nps.gov/articles/cold-cream-jar.htm), from the series "Curious Collections of Fort Stanwix"; its research drew on a Buffalo history website, Arts and Crafts Society pages on Roycroft and Elbert Hubbard, and a 2000 Business History Review article on the Larkin Company. Rewritten in hubnx's own words.