Taylor, Smith & Taylor “Rooster” Coupe Bowl, Stylised Cockerel in Olive, Gold and Rust, Marked Oven Proof and Detergent Safe, Chester, West Virginia

The Piece

A shallow white bowl with a rooster standing in the middle of it, drawn in the flat graphic style of American mid-century kitchenware.

The bird is stylised rather than lifelike: a gold body worked over with fine dark hatching and scale patterning, a tail of olive green and yellow plumes swept back, a rust-red comb and wattle, and one dark eye.

He stands on a spray of small flowers — coral pink blossoms, olive leaves and yellow buds curling out to either side.

The body is a warm off-white with a clean unpatterned rim, so the whole design sits in the well and reads from directly above.

Underneath, printed in grey inside an oval: OVEN PROOF, TS&T, the pattern name Rooster in script, MADE IN USA, and DETERGENT SAFE.

History & Provenance

The script word on that backstamp is the pattern name, and it is the one most people get wrong.

Taylor, Smith & Taylor produced two rooster patterns. The famous one is Reveille, which turns up constantly and is what almost every rooster-decorated TS&T piece gets called. This is not that. The mark reads Rooster, which is a separate catalogued TS&T pattern in its own right — documented as a green, yellow and brown cockerel in the centre, exactly as here. Naming it correctly is the difference between a piece someone can find and a piece filed under the wrong name forever.

The firm behind it was a serious American pottery. Taylor, Smith & Taylor ran at Chester, West Virginia from 1900 to 1981. It began as Taylor, Lee & Smith under five owners — Colonel John N. Taylor, C. A. Smith, Joseph G. Lee, Albert G. Mason and William L. Smith — and took its lasting name after Lee left early. Through the middle of the century it worked with designers including J. Palin Thorley and the industrial designer Walter Dorwin Teague, and it produced Lu-Ray Pastels, one of the most collected American dinnerware lines ever made.

Anchor Hocking bought the company in 1972. Production continued under that ownership until the plant closed in 1981, and the works were demolished in 2012. Nothing carrying this mark can postdate 1981.

The two claims printed around the edge of the mark are the other piece of history, and they are easy to read past. OVEN PROOF and DETERGENT SAFE are not decoration; they are sales arguments aimed at a specific moment. The automatic dishwasher went from a novelty to a fixture in American kitchens across the 1950s and 1960s, and machine detergent was far harsher than anything a sink had ever done to a plate. Decorated dinnerware started failing in the new machines, and potteries had to put the promise on the back of the ware in order to keep selling it. A plate that advertises its own dishwasher survival is a plate made for a kitchen that had just acquired one.

Dated on the maker's operating dates and the marking: c. 1960–1981, with the closure of the pottery as a hard ceiling.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

The rooster is the oldest device in American kitchen decoration, and this is a good one.

It is not a farmhouse cliche drawn soft and sentimental. This bird is graphic — hatched, scaled, patterned, closer to a woodcut than a painting — which is why it still looks deliberate on a modern shelf rather than merely nostalgic.

The palette is the useful part. Olive, mustard gold, rust and coral on off-white is a warm, slightly dusty range that sits happily with wood, brass, unbleached linen and painted cabinetry, and it does not fight a room the way a bright pattern does.

A single bowl is more versatile than a set. Stood on a plate rail or an easel it is a piece of graphic art; laid flat it takes keys and change on a hall table, fruit on a counter, or garlic and onions beside a stove. One good object does more than eight matching ones.

It also carries a real American maker. Taylor, Smith & Taylor ran in Chester, West Virginia for eighty-one years, employed designers of genuine standing, and no longer exists — the buildings came down in 2012. That is a closed story, and every surviving piece is finite.

And it is a good gift for anyone who keeps a rooster kitchen, collects American dinnerware, or has a West Virginia or Ohio Valley connection. The pottery towns along that stretch of river made a great deal of what American families ate off for a century.

A note on use. The maker marked this bowl oven proof and detergent safe and meant it, and the decoration sits under a hard glaze rather than on top of it. It is a sturdy piece.

That said, hand wash it. Sixty years of dishwasher cycles is not what the promise was underwriting, and modern machine detergents are more aggressive than the ones it was tested against. Warm water and a soft cloth will keep the colours as strong as they are now.

For food use, treat it as occasional rather than daily. American dinnerware of this period predates modern lead-in-glaze standards and carries no certification to them, so for everyday eating a modern piece is the better choice and this one is better on a shelf, holding dry things, or serving now and then.

Avoid thermal shock and avoid the microwave. Do not move it from a cold shelf into a hot oven, and do not cut directly in it — a knife will leave grey metal marks in any glaze this age.