Manufacturer: Buffalo China
User: Wanakah Country Club
Pattern name: Floridian
Date of pickle shell/relish: 1925
Notes: Floridian was a Buffalo stock pattern, patented in 1925. It has been used with topmarked china, but probably none with a monogram that has stirred quite so much interest as this intertwined WCC, or, as a faction of railroad china collectors see it, CGW.
The pattern has now been identified as having been used by the Wanakah Country Club in Hamburg, New York, which lies some 15 miles south of Buffalo overlooking the eastern edge of Lake Erie.
From the club website, the Wanakah Golf Club was founded in 1899 by "several prominent Buffalo businessmen" with a nine-hole golf course that "quickly grew in popularity and membership." It was "re-chartered in 1913 as the Wanakah Country Club."
By 1925, the golf course "was expanded to 18 holes" and "the current clubhouse facility with a shingled exterior and several large columned porticos was introduced that same year." And the new clubhouse would also coincide with the year this china was manufactured.
Mary Helen Miskuly, a club member, identified the pattern when she inquired as to the date of its backstamp. She said that she and some other club members have pieces of the topmarked china and that additionally, a topmarked WCC Floridian bowl (and plate) are on display in the Wanakah clubhouse, shown above.
Mike Karnath, club general manager and CEO, provided us with an additional photo of that bowl (which is a square salad) and its backstamp, shown above.
In addition to actually finding the WCC monogram bowl in a place of honor on the club premises, another interesting thing about these pieces is their backstamps. This is by no means a definitive study, but out of dozens of Floridian pieces found on the internet and in our members' collections, consider the following:
- Of the WCC-marked china, not a single piece found has an Albert Pick – Chicago – backstamp, with Albert Pick having been the distributor. It makes sense that with Wanakah's close proximity to Buffalo China, no distributor was needed and certainly not one in Chicago.
- Of the Floridian pattern pieces without a topmark, some have the Albert Pick backstamp, and some have one of several Buffalo backstamps. The conclusion here would simply be that some of Floridian's orders were from customers in the Chicago area and some were elsewhere.
- If this monogram actually were railroad-related, considering that Albert Pick was a known distributor for railroads (i.e. Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, for one noteworthy example) it seems very unusual that they, with an office in Chicago, would not have been chosen as the go-between in any order for topmarked china by Chicago Great Western Railroad, and therefore all CGW dishes would have had the Pick backstamp.
From the 1932 Albert Pick-Barth catalog that included this pattern: "Decorated underglaze with Spanish decalcomania border in black, blue gray, tan and red, consisting of conventional leaves and geometric figures in panels between a narrow tan broken band at edge and a blue gray band below."
The actual topmark, in brown shaded with pink and black, has a stylized monogram with a large W and C intertwined with a smaller C. It is easy to see why the stylized fonts in this are easily confused, or that is to say, why the small C was confused for a G. However, in looking through fonts of the 1920s, they frequently had swashes – or flourishes – such as these found at the top and bottom of that C. The image at left nicely evokes a C with similar swashes such as that found in this monogram.
Sources:
Wanakah Country Club, history, clubhouse photo, photos of WCC-monogrammed bowl
For more info:
Floridian, by Buffalo China
Contributors:
Mary Helen Miskuly: ID and plate photo, square salad photo in club's display case
Mike Karnath, Wanakah Country Club general manager and CEO: square salad photos
Susan Phillips: relish photos