H and H Coffee in Square Glass Jar

Albert, a local San Antonio picker, brought us a few new items.

The first is an H and H Coffee Jar, the first we’ve seen of its kind. First it is square and squatty in glass. The logo is a paper label placed on the front in an inset where you’d expect a label to go but the size doesn’t match up. The label has elements blacked out not by a marker but as if they were printed that way. The other three sides of the jar have a pebble textured diamond shape. Three bands of ridges wrap around the jar. The markings on the bottom look like an A, 16, 8223 and a circled M in the center. The top is metal and painted red. The manufacturing process created visible seams from top to bottm on the two opposite corners where the mold joined.

So, we’re not sure what this jar is. It could be an earlier version of a glass container before Three Rivers. H and H Coffee is an early brand. The glass design doesn’t seem like a Three Rivers piece. We’ll watch for more clues. (Update: This is a Duraglas Jar used for other coffee brands.)

The other item is an antique coffee grinder.

It designed to be mounted on the wall. The hopper where you load the beans is porcelain with a dark green glaze. On it in faint gold lettering is “Koffie”, Dutch for coffee. “Pe.De.” on the throat of the grinding mechanism is for Peter Dienes. This was a German company from Remscheid founded in 1869. The grinder is adjustable to vary between very coarse and very fine. The jar that catches the ground coffee has marking to measure up to 1.5oz. The lid we received is clearly not original. The lid should be a simple rounded wooden or porcelain cap.

We got the grinder as a vintage coffee-related item. Nice to find out it was likely made in the 1930’s, German, and could have ground some H and H Coffee beans.