Free Exhibit: "The Shimer Collection-80 Years of Cookie Jars" at Cranbury Museum

The Cranbury Historical and Preservation Society Extends its
Free Exhibit: the Shimer Cookie Jar Collection

CRANBURY, N.J. --It all started when an elephant-shaped
cookie jar caught Wilma Shimer’s eye. “My sons needed a place to keep their
Oreos,’’ she said. I figured it was a good thing to have.

 Those sons, Bob and
John Shimer, are now grown with families of their own. But not only does Shimer
still have that jar, it is part of a collection of 220. They fill neat shelves
throughout the kitchen, living room and dining room of the home where she and
her late husband Robert raised their boys.

Several dozen of her jars are currently on display at the
Cranbury Museum, ranging from early containers from the 1930s to a  recently made gingerbread house jar that she says
is her newest. “I had to ask my family to stop giving them to me because I’ve
run out of room but I found space for that one,” she said.

There are cookie jars of Red Riding Hood, W.C. Fields, Elsie
the Cow, and Disney characters including an early Mickey Mouse. There are puppies,
kittens, sheep, Ferninand the Bull, Winnie the Pooh and Dr. Seuss’s Cat in the
Hat.

It is the variety that appeals to Shimer.

A longtime Cranbury resident, Shimer and her late husband
moved to New Jersey from Indiana, where she was born. She turns 90 in March. “I
move slowly, but I can still move,” she said.

An artist whose favorite medium is water color, she became
intrigued with cookie jars after reading that Andy Warhol had collected them.
Though her first jar came into the house in the 1960s, it was in 1997 that she
started buying these collectibles in earnest.

“I could go to the Columbus Market and spot a good jar clear
across the room,” she said, speaking of a large Burlington County farm and
antiques market.

Most of her acquisitions cost around $25, and often turned
out to be bargains selling for many times what she paid.  Though there are now  many websites that catalogue jars and what
they are worth, Shimer does not spend a lot of time tracking their value. She’s
certain she has some worth hundreds of dollars.

When Warhol’s collection of 175 jars was auctioned at Sotheby’s
in 1988 the sale brought in nearly $250,000—though the fact that the artist
owned them greatly increased what buyers were willing to pay.

The jars are much harder to find at a good price than they
were when she started collecting, Shimer said.

 Cookie jars came into
being in the 1930s and soon became a craze as useful household objects that
were also fun.

Most valuable are the earliest ones, made by pottery and
ceramics companies in Ohio like Brush, Shawnee and McCoy.

She has several collectors’ guides, but the dollar value
isn’t what interests her most. It is the variety, and the creativity that went
into their manufacture. As a painter Shimer is a visual person. Her vanity
license plate reads MSART. But there’s also the thrill of the hunt. Informed
that her cookie jar collection is bigger than Warhol’s ever was, she is elated.
“I beat Andy Warhol?,” she said with a big smile, “How about that. ”

In addition to the cookie jar exhibit, the Cranbury
Historical and Preservation Society is also presenting vintage cookbooks and
kitchen implements. Those include Betty
Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys & Girls. It was published in 1957. Because
the book’s author Thelma Sonnichsen lived in Cranbury she found volunteer
recipe testers, 12 children who were members of a local 4-H Club. Many still
live in Cranbury.                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Visitors are also welcome to visit the museum’s permanent
collections,  six rooms of period
furniture, art, costumes, and artifacts. Admission is free, though donations
are welcome and help underwrite the costs of running the museum, staging
exhibits, and events.

For recorded information call 609-655-2611. Directions are
available at www.cranburyhistory.org.