H and H Blend Coffee

H and H Blend Coffee is Hoffmann-Hayman’s flagship house blend—the line named first whenever the company roster is summarized on this site—and the oldest continuous identity represented in the collection. Early retail was dominated by real tin cans with paper labels (medium grind, “Steel Cut,” Hoffmann-Hayman San Antonio marks), followed by glass Crystalvac jars in the 1930s, then a long run of lithographed metal as tin economics and marketing changed. An 18 April 1922 San Antonio Evening News advertisement spells out the same half-pound, one-pound, and three-pound container run for H and H Blend in three preparations—whole bean, medium ground, and pulverized—documenting the full grind × size matrix in local press; see H and H Blend grinds and sizes — Evening News, 18 Apr 1922. Blend was advertised alongside Sam Houston, Texas Girl, and other brands in the mid-1930s press and on postcards in the ephemera files.

Products

H and H Blend Coffee

  1. H and H Blend Coffee ½ pound, 1 pound, and 3 pound containers, each offered whole bean, medium ground, or pulverized (San Antonio Evening News, 18 Apr 1922 — see blog note)
  2. H and H Blend Coffee ½ pound bag (1921)
  3. H and H Blend Coffee 1 pound bag (1921)
  4. H and H Blend Coffee 3 pound bag (1921)
  5. H and H Blend Coffee 1 pound box
  6. H and H Blend Coffee 2½ pound tin
  7. H and H Blend Coffee 3 pound tin
  8. H and H Blend Coffee 1, 2, and 3 pound cans (catalog-era wording)

H and H Coffee (house mark)

Retail pieces that say “H and H Coffee” (or High Grade / Family Size) without the Blend script still belong to the same San Antonio house; they are catalogued mainly under H and H Coffee posts rather than the Blend tin series:

  1. H and H Coffee 1 pound bag
  2. H and H Coffee 2 pound regular bag
  3. H and H Coffee ½ pound tin (1934)
  4. H and H Coffee 1 pound tin
  5. H and H High Grade three-pound tin
  6. H and H Coffee Family Size tin (28 oz.)

Glass and instant

Vacuum Crystalvac jars and instant jars are shared infrastructure across several coffees; see Crystalvac Jars and H and H Instant Coffee. A three-pound H and H Blend example with paper label is in H and H Blend three-pound Crystalvac jar.

Options

Period copy in the 1922 Evening News names whole bean, medium ground, and pulverized for retail Blend; collection labels and later ads also use drip, regular, steel cut, and fine phrasing.

  1. Whole bean
  2. Drip grind
  3. Medium ground
  4. Regular grind
  5. Pulverized grind
  6. Fine grind for glass brewers (blue sticker)

Packaging

1920s–early 1930s: paper-label tins

Early Blend tins were paper-labeled rectangles and rounds; lithography on the metal itself comes later. The three-pound rectangular tin from Euless is one anchor piece; the Comfort round tin documents the label-missing variant. Simpson & Doeller identifies the Baltimore tinshop mark on a 1920s round skirt.

  1. H and H Blend large (rectangular) tin

H and H Blend large tin

  1. H and H Blend 2½ lb tin

H and H Blend Coffee 2½ lb tin

  1. H and H Blend round tin (top; label missing on body)

H and H Blend round tin, top

Additional Blend tins on the blog include the round three-pound paper-label tin, unopened one-pound paper-label tin, the 2019 half-pound round tin, and the Light Housekeepers half-pound rectangular tin.

Retail ephemera from this era also includes the paper sample cup (“Ask your grocer for H and H Coffee”) — not yet a published collection post (pending gallery photography).

1930s: Crystalvac

As tin prices rose, H and H moved part of the line into square glass Crystalvac jars from Three Rivers Glass; standard jar threads kept them compatible with Kerr and Mason–Ball lids. The jars were used for more than one brand, but Blend-labeled glass is documented in the collection post linked above. Below: small amber Crystalvac jars typical of the era on the shelf.

  1. Small amber Crystalvac jar

Small amber Crystalvac jar

  1. Small amber Crystalvac jar (top corner)

Small amber Crystalvac jar, top corner

1940s onward: lithographed “H and H Coffee” tins

These examples carry the High Grade and Family Size positioning rather than the paper-label Blend face card, but they illustrate the same decades-long shift back toward printed metal after the glass interlude.

  1. High Grade three-pound tin (as photographed on the blog)

High Grade three-pound tin

  1. H and H Coffee Family Size tin

H and H Coffee Family Size tin

Collection posts

Paths below mirror the in-page Packaging notes and Products; use this list as a single index to blog write-ups.

Paper-label and catalog-era tins

High Grade, Family Size, and house-mark tins

Ephemera and pricing

Reference photography

Outside Our Collection — early-1920s bulk Blend tin documentation and Witte Museum staging (visit); more frames in Reference.

Large bulk-size H and H Blend tin — monogram side

H and H Blend tins staged at Witte Museum, 15 October 2019

Newspaper & period branding

1923 San Antonio Light illustrated Blend pack from the housewife products display (full page); additional clips in Collection posts and the gallery indexes below.

H and H Blend pack from the 26 Aug 1923 products display

Wanted

Items that remain thin or absent in the online collection (also echoed on Wanted):

  1. H and H Blend Coffee 1 pound box
  2. H and H Blend Coffee 3 pound bag (1921 style)
  3. H and H Blend ½ pound, 1 pound, and 3 pound bags in general (1921 sales-form era)
  4. H and H Blend ½ pound tin, Light Housekeepers (1920s)
  5. Clear photographs of any Blend bag or box variant not already represented in Our Collection or Reference