Interesting Logo on China - Railroad or Hotel?

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CanadianBottles

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I found this bowl and lots of other china with this monogram on it in a dump with lots of other china from various hotels and railroads, unfortunately all broken. This one doesn't have the back half, but it still displays nice and I love old railroad and hotel china so I had to keep it. I suppose it's unlikely anyone will have any idea where it came from, but I figure it's worth trying to see if anyone knows anything. Reads "Canadian Head Office Ottawa", but I can't make out what the monogram says. Maybe SM&Co?
 

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Plumbata

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Whelp, I scratched the noggin and poked around a bit, and my best guess is that the monogram is "M L I Co.", (LMI if the fancy letters are read left to right, but I believe the "M" in the center comes first), which would correspond with the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, which had a head office in Ottawa. The feet of the "M" have outward-oriented curlicues which I believe is why the letter on the left appeared as an "S" to you, though to me it looks like like a fancy L (£). I couldn't find any exact matches for that logo style but it doesn't necessarily mean anything. Good luck!
 

CanadianBottles

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Hey, I think you're right! I thought that was a funny design for the M, and now that you point it out it definitely points outward, not inward. Funny that an insurance company would have its own china, I guess they must have had an employees' cafeteria, or maybe to deliver lunch to the higher up employees. Certainly seems like the most likely possibility anyway, since not too many international companies had their head office in Ottawa. It wasn't (and still isn't) a very big city, despite being the capital.
 

Plumbata

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Glad to help! The "M" got me at first too, so I had to carefully follow the lines and tease things apart. Reading cursive isn't exactly a thriving art these days (heck I can hardly do more than my name in cursive anymore) so I'm not 100% on the MLI Co designation , but it seemed to make sense. Being used in a cafeteria or something of the sort makes sense to me, but you finding it with a bunch of railroad and hotel china makes me wonder how it got in the mix? Then again, maybe the headquarters at the time was along the same garbage route that picked up stuff from the train station and hotels, which tended to be positioned close to the commuters filtering out of the stations. Find any interesting bottles in the dump?
 

CanadianBottles

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Yeah I'm not sure about that, most of the china was from the same hotel, which was run by a railroad, so that makes sense that both would be in there, but I've also seen pieces from a different, unaffiliated hotel and some unidentified pieces so it looks like multiple places contributed to it. I'm thinking that it must have been one company that picked up garbage from businesses and dumped it in the (former) middle of nowhere, since there's no household garbage apart from things hotel guests would throw out and it's nowhere near any hotels. Not much interesting in the way of intact bottles yet, but I've seen shards of some pretty amazing things. 95% of the dump is shattered pottery and it is not fun to dig at all, and it's not in an easily accessible area, and I haven't figured out how to get a shovel in there without looking like I'm going to bury a body, so all digging so far has been with a little folding shovel and not much progress has been made. When things thaw out I'm going to go back and try some more, but I'm not sure if there's too much to be found. It's really shallow as well, only about a foot deep before hitting clay. Which could be a cap, I don't know, it's hard to dig with a folding shovel.
 

Plumbata

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Thanks for describing the spot, sounds interesting. With the high density of hotel trash, there may be some accidentally discarded coins (tips) that were inadvertently wiped off the tables or trays and into the garbage bin, so keep the eyes peeled. And I'm not familiar with the soil in your area but if the dump you're in hits clay at 1 foot, it being merely a cap is a distinct possibility. The nature of the trash below may be entirely different and more exciting than the busted china above. I've had to sneak shovels into areas with lots of potential onlookers, and have done it 2 ways. One is to quickly toss a shovel into the woods during the night when no one is looking, then walk in there the next day looking quite innocent. I still have a shovel or 2 stashed in the woods from such adventures. Another way, which always makes me chuckle, involved a padded, non-rigid fabric guitar case/protector I found for free (it was one for an electric guitar) and the shorter shovels with a "D" or yoke handle, which would fit inside the guitar case with room to spare for smaller scratchers and tools. Oriented properly, it honestly just looked like I was walking around with a guitar unless one was to scrutinize a strange bulge or two from the assorted tools I'd stuffed inside the main body area, lol. For sneaking around construction/demo areas or places guarded by swaths of pedestrian-heavy activity it worked like a charm, and no one ever paid any notice to the long-haired fellow "with the guitar". It's a crucial component of the "stealth-digging" toolkit. Most of the time I just pack everything in with those large military olive drab duffel bags, but that simply can't be done some places. Anyway, good luck come the thaw!
 

nhpharm

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I really think it is the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. Although it is not a perfect match, the logo arrangement is very similar to the Canadian branch and the font is dead on. And yes...they did have their own china for sure...I believe that the Canadian and American offices had big banquet halls and so forth. I attached a photo of the US china from them as well as a photo of the Canadian logo.
 

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