H and H Coffee

Dedicated to the history of the Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Co. founded 1899 in San Antonio, Texas.

Stanford P. Stevens (S. P. Stevens)

San Antonio painter — known on this site from two signed personal oil portraits (a 1946 woman, a 1954 cowboy holding a revolver) and from family-lore connecting him to Hoffmann-Hayman billboard work and to a firm called Stevens Outdoor Advertising. The H&H connection is not yet documented in any primary source on this site: no surviving sign or billboard carries Stevens’s signature; no city directory, obituary, or business filing for Stevens Outdoor Advertising is catalogued; the 1934 “Fragrant…” billboard photographed by Jas. W. Zintgraff (see _posts/2018-07-12-h-and-h-coffee-company-photos.md) has no painter attribution; and the company hub labels this lead as “billboard painter (unconfirmed attribution)”. The face on the museum’s “We Serve Master Chef Coffee” 4×8 sign shares enough composition with the 1954 Stevens cowboy portrait — handlebar moustache, heavy dark brows, alert direct gaze, 3/4 head view — to keep the attribution as a live lead worth examining further, but resolution requires sourcing examples of Stevens Outdoor commercial sign work for a like-to-like comparison (see Wanted item 1). Reliability is set to unverified and the page should be read as a research stub flagging an unresolved but plausible lead.

What’s documented (signed art samples)

Year Subject Signature File
1946 Portrait of a woman “S. P. Stevens ‘46” raw-archives/images/1946_s-p-stevens-woman-portrait.webp
1954 Cowboy with revolver “S.P. Stevens ‘54” (bottom right) raw-archives/images/1954_s-p-stevens-cowboy-portrait.jpg

These confirm a working San Antonio painter named S. P. Stevens active 1946–1954 in personal portraiture — oil-on-canvas, framed, signed-and-dated. They do not independently link Stevens to Hoffmann-Hayman or to commercial sign work.

What’s family-lore (the H&H claim)

The H&H connection rests entirely on an oral-history note collected during project research (wording preserved verbatim from the retired editorial draft):

S. P. Stevens — Stanford P. Stevens — got his start painting H and H Coffee billboards like the one in our collection, then went on to own Stevens Outdoor Advertising. He is also remembered as a collector of guns, Americana, and cars.

The claim has two falsifiable components:

  1. Stevens painted H and H Coffee billboards (specifically, the kind of billboard pictured in the 1934 Zintgraff photograph or surviving commercial signs in the collection).
  2. Stevens founded Stevens Outdoor Advertising, a San Antonio outdoor-advertising company.

Neither component is currently supported by a primary source on this site. Both are tractable research targets — San Antonio city directories from the 1930s–1960s, business filings with the Texas Secretary of State, obituaries, or signature-bearing sign work would all materially advance one component or the other.

Visual-comparison status — plausible lead, awaiting like-to-like

The Stevens cowboy portrait and the museum’s “We Serve Master Chef Coffee” sign (assets/images/gallery/2014-07-27-master_chef_sign.jpg) share a recognizable face composition: 3/4 head view, heavy dark brows, an alert direct gaze, and the same thick handlebar moustache flanking a similarly-structured nose-and-mouth. The chef’s toque and cowboy hat both crop the upper portion of the head with the figure’s gaze remaining frontal. These compositional similarities are sufficient to warrant continued examination — the faces look similar enough that the family-lore attribution to Stevens is a live lead, not a dismissed one.

An earlier revision of this page argued the visual comparison was weakened by surface-treatment differences — the Stevens portraits use modeled irises, fine eyelash detail, and dimensionally-shaded handlebars, while the Master Chef sign uses flat black-dot eyes and flat-silhouette moustaches. That argument was a scale mismatch: the Master Chef sign is roughly 4 × 8 ft, intended to be read from 15–25 ft across a counter or storefront, while the Stevens oils are easel-scale portraits intended to be viewed from 1–3 ft. A working sign-painter would never put modeled irises or strand-shaded handlebars on a 4×8 sign — the detail vanishes at viewing distance and the labor is wasted. The same hand should produce different surface treatments at different scales, so the surface differences cited in the prior revision are expected for a single-painter hypothesis, not evidence against it. The shared face composition (which scale does not explain away) is the salient comparison.

Net: the visual evidence is plausibly consistent with the family-lore attribution and worth pursuing. The methodological next step is like-to-like — compare the Master Chef sign to other known Stevens Outdoor Advertising commercial billboard or sign work (commercial-scale to commercial-scale), not to the easel portraits. Whether the Master Chef sign’s face matches Stevens Outdoor’s documented commercial style is the actual hypothesis-discriminating question, and it requires sourcing additional Stevens Outdoor sign examples first.

The family-lore claim and the documentary silence admit three readings:

Hypothesis 1 — The family lore is accurate

Stevens did paint H&H billboards as a young sign-painter in the 1930s–1940s before founding Stevens Outdoor Advertising. The two surviving signed oils (1946 woman, 1954 cowboy) are personal art-samples in a different artistic mode than his commercial sign work — which is structurally why visual comparison between portraits and signs is weak. Under this hypothesis, surviving H&H sign work in the museum would carry Stevens-attributable craftsmanship even though no signature has yet been located; a signed sign back, a paper-trail to the painter’s shop, or an obituary mentioning H&H commissions would confirm.

Hypothesis 2 — The family lore is approximate (attribution-by-association)

Stevens may have worked for a San Antonio outdoor-advertising shop that took H&H commissions in the 1930s–1950s without personally painting the surviving H&H billboards documented on this site, or he may have founded Stevens Outdoor Advertising as a billboard contractor whose early book of business included H&H work (without Stevens himself wielding the brush on specific surviving signs). Family memory across two or three generations frequently collapses “painted at the shop that painted X” into “painted X.” Under this hypothesis the H&H connection is real but indirect, and the attribution-to-the-specific-billboard-in-our-collection claim is incorrect.

Hypothesis 3 — Misattribution or conflation

The “Stevens” attribution could be conflated across generations with a different mid-century San Antonio sign-painter (there were several active outdoor-advertising shops in the city in the relevant period), or could be a family-history claim that was strengthened in retelling without primary basis. Under this hypothesis the two signed portraits document a real painter who is unrelated to H&H, and the lore is a clean misattribution.

Resolution requires: (a) a Stevens Outdoor Advertising listing in a San Antonio city directory with founding date and address; (b) an obituary or biographical profile of Stanford P. Stevens with birth/death dates and career detail; (c) a signed signature, painter’s stamp, or shop attribution on the back of any surviving H&H billboard or commercial sign; (d) Stevens family papers, photographs of him painting on-site, or commission records.

Profession (as claimed)

  • Painter — outdoor advertising / billboard work (per family lore; not yet documented)
  • Owner — Stevens Outdoor Advertising, San Antonio (per family lore; founding date and address unconfirmed)

Personal interests (per family lore)

  • Collector of guns, Americana, and cars

Open questions

  • Birth and death dates — a Bexar County / Texas vital-records search would settle the basic biographical frame.
  • Stevens Outdoor Advertising founding date and address — San Antonio city directories from c.1935–1965 would name the firm if it existed under that name. Worldcat and the Polk’s San Antonio City Directory annual series are the canonical sources.
  • Texas Secretary of State business filing for Stevens Outdoor Advertising — would confirm corporate existence, incorporation date, principals, and address history.
  • Obituary, interview, or profile of Stanford P. Stevens — the San Antonio Express, Light, Express-News, or trade press would carry an obituary if Stevens died in San Antonio between c.1960 and the present.
  • Signature, painter’s stamp, or shop attribution on the back of surviving H&H sign work — the museum holds the “We Serve Master Chef Coffee” sign and other commercial signage; physical inspection of sign backs and supporting boards could surface a painter’s name.
  • Photographic evidence of Stevens at work — a snapshot of Stevens with brush-in-hand at an H&H billboard, in a Stevens Outdoor shop, or with H&H staff would be decisive.
  • Painter, shop, or contractor attribution on the 1934 “Fragrant…” billboard — the Zintgraff group photo doesn’t credit the billboard painter; the original Zintgraff studio records (if extant) may carry a commission note.
  • High-resolution Master Chef sign face vs. any sourced Stevens Outdoor commercial sign face — the actual discriminating comparison. Once Stevens Outdoor sign examples are sourced (top Wanted item), a like-to-like brushwork-and-composition comparison against the Master Chef chef can be run; comparing the easel portraits to the 4×8 sign is scale-mismatched and not the right test.

Wanted

  1. Examples of Stevens Outdoor Advertising commercial billboard or sign work — the like-to-like comparison target. Photographs, surviving signs, or period documentation of commercial-scale work attributable to Stevens Outdoor would let the Master Chef sign be compared shop-style to shop-style rather than against the easel portraits. This is the highest-priority research target for resolving the visual-attribution question.
  2. City directory entries for Stevens Outdoor Advertising (any year 1935–1965) — would establish the firm’s existence, founding date range, and address; many San Antonio outdoor-advertising shops also illustrated their listings with example signs, which would supply the like-to-like comparison referenced above.
  3. A signed H&H billboard, sign back, or commercial sign carrying a Stevens signature or shop stamp — would settle Hypothesis 1 directly (no visual-attribution chain needed).
  4. Obituary, biographical profile, or interview with Stanford P. Stevens — would settle dates, career path, and the H&H connection if any. San Antonio Express, Light, Express-News, or outdoor-advertising trade press are the canonical sources.
  5. Texas Secretary of State business filings for Stevens Outdoor Advertising — corporate existence, principals, address history.
  6. Stevens family papers or photographs — particularly any documenting Stevens painting H&H work on-site, or any unpublished portfolio of his commercial sign work.
  7. A second-witness oral history from a San Antonio sign-painter, H&H employee descendant, or outdoor-advertising trade contact who can corroborate or refute the family-lore claim.

Contact with leads.

See also