Our Collection

This is the main photographic index of the Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Company museum holdings — the tins, jars, paper, and small artifacts the family and friends of the firm have held onto, tracked down at estate sales, or had returned to us by collectors over the years. Most items here also have a dedicated post with provenance notes, measurements, and condition details.

In-hand photos and OSB. Many recent close-up shots set pieces on a plain workshop OSB (oriented-strand board) bench instead of a studio sweep. The surface is a deliberate San Antonio link: the wood technologist Armin Elmendorf — the figure widely credited in the U.S. forest-products literature with the waferboard / strand-oriented work that became the commercial basis for OSB (see e.g. Forest Products Laboratory, An evolutionary history of oriented strandboard (OSB), General Technical Report FPL-GTR-236, 2015) — was born in San Antonio, Texas (8 September 1890). A chipboard offcut is a practical workbench; it is also a small nod to that engineering line.

What you’ll find in the grid:

• Branded tins — H and H Blend, H and H High Grade, Master Chef, Broncho, Sam Houston, and related private labels in sizes from one pound up through three-pound keywind and family tins, plus a loose bench lot of vintage strip keys for peeling keywind vacuum lids.
• Crystalvac jars — clear and amber glass, small and large, with wooden handles and painted or plain lids, produced for H and H by Three Rivers Glass.
• Spices and tea — 1 oz, 1.5 oz, and 4 oz spice tins (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, black pepper, cumin) and early H and H Tea cartons.
• Bags, sacks, and paper goods — 1 lb and 2 lb bag sacks, sales forms, letterhead, the Alamo Cookbook, parish bulletins carrying early Crystalvac ads, a large-format reprint of the 24 July 1932 San Antonio Sunday Light article announcing the new Delaware Street plant under construction (with the architectural illustration and the 1932 officers, architects, and building facts of record), and two reference volumes by William H. Ukers.
• Signs and ephemera — the Master Chef sign, H and H price signs, puzzlers, a Sam Houston branded insulated jug, and a slide whistle promotional piece.
• Contextual items — Tucker Coffee and Chase & Sanborn pieces and Delaware Punch, Pinch Kork-N-Seal, and other Three Rivers Glass bottles kept alongside the H and H material for the fuller San Antonio coffee-and-bottling picture.

For items we’ve documented but do not own, see the Reference gallery. For lookalikes from unrelated firms, see Not Our H & H.

A gallery of our collection