My Story

My father (born 1908) had one cow (right) when he was a child. I (born 1940) also had one cow "Bessie", (below, left) when I was a child. When I was a good boy and finished my milk it gave me more. My wife and I got one for each of our three boys (born in the ‘60s). Put 5 cows together, and they start to make a herd.

For a long time, I just occasionally picked one up at a flea market; and my price limit was $10. Nevertheless, the collection slowly grew till it numbered 50 or so; we had them on shelves around the top of the kitchen, and then when we moved to an older house there were some shelves in the guest bathroom where we put them, and our many guests used to get a great kick out of them.

Everything was fine until we moved to London in 1995. From visits to the Victoria and Albert museum, the Bermondsey Market, antique shows, the Silver Vaults, and Stoke-on-Trent I learned a bit about the history of cow creamers and had a chance to see some superb Staffordshire and silver examples. At that point I decided that I might as well get serious about my own collection, and quite obviously the price limit disappeared.

The collection now numbers somewhere well over a thousand, and thanks largely to eBay (which has had quite an impact both on availability and price) it continues to grow, weekly if not daily.

So what is a cow creamer, and what qualifies one to join Craig’s collection?

	The basic rule that's based on the history of these items (see that section) as well as my first ones, is a whole cow or part of a cow (especially the head) with two holes, one to put the cream in, the other to pour it out. That's a bit too restrictive for my tastes however, so a bit of explication is required.
	The early silver and Staffordshire ones, and their variants, are almost invariably standing cow-shaped creamers, with or without bases, generally smaller than 6” tall and 8” long.
	Bulls count of course…anatomically complete or not.
	Plain old cow figurines, or vases, or sugar bowls don’t cut it (although I’ve been given a few, and sometimes a cow creamer will have non-creamer calves, like my Bessie & her calves), and tea pots and creamers often come with accompanying sugar bowls.
	One place where the basic two-hole 'creamer' rule gets a bit shaky is with size at some point, there's a shift between an implement designed for cream, and one intended as a milk or water (or beer or wine) pitcher. But nonetheless, these have an important place in my collection, as well as their own 'pitcher' section on this web page.
	The other main codicil to the 'rule' is that cow-shaped creamers or pitchers with just the one opening and a spout obviously count as well. These are scattered through the collection categories. Here are my favorites of this type, made and wood fired for me by my dear friend Ingrid Barnes. They're described in more detail in Modern Variations.
	My collection has single-hole pitchers (i.e., larger than makes sense for cream except for gluttons and huge families) as well as single-hole creamers, although for them as well the restriction is that they need to be cow shaped, not just cow colored or with a picture of a cow on them. Bowls or cups don't count either they need to be designed to pour.
	Here are a couple other examples of single-hole, cow shaped creamers And here are a couple more cow/cow head shaped large pitchers. The' face jug' here is from the US south, and the black and white cow with the flower garland is from Brazil. So overall, the collection is of cow (or cow head) shaped containersdesigned to hold and pour liquid.

	The collection also includes cow-shaped teapots. These almost invariably have two holes, and a lid. Teapot makers are pretty imaginative, so some of these are pretty wild. I now have over 180 different ones (and it's getting hard to find new ones. Perhaps this collection will inspire some fanciful teapot maker!).
	Cruets and wine or oil jugs also count. I even have a few other animal creamers (either as a mistaken identity, or because I can’t resist the delightful Schafer and Vater animal creamers…more on S&V later!), and a few special cow-shaped or cow-like containers (again when I couldn’t resist, e.g. the Beswick humorous ‘fake’ cow creamers, or some special pottery pieces).
	The collection also has a few plastic toys designed to take in, then give out milk. And of course doll-house size creamers, although most of these are so small they don’t really pour. I even have a number of miniature ‘collectible’ tea sets, although again most of those aren’t designed to really work.

	This cow (water buffalo) definitely has two holes. It is, however, an opium pipe, so it hardly qualifies as a creamer…but I couldn’t resist it. It’s well used (though not by me I assure you).

For those of you who do eBay…the term ‘cow creamer’ has almost become generic (there are generally@300 on auction at any time), and I’ve seen all kinds of animal creamers/pitchers being sold as cow creamers (I’ve been fooled by some). They are also found on eBay under cow or bull pitcher and jug. Do I have duplicates? Sure - sometimes deliberate, e.g. to upgrade to a higher quality creamer, sometimes by mistake. Also, there are a number of versions that are made by several makers, or come in a variety of colors.