UCAGCO marked pieces of Christmas Ceramic Figurines are almost always marked Made in Japan and like other importers, one might assume that they were a Japanese company. Not so, as this brief history details.
The offices of United China and Glass Company (UCAGCO) were based in New Orleans and New York. Ucagco was primarily a distributor of dinnerware and glassware. They were the distributor of many Japanese china patterns during the early 1950s.
United China & Glass Co. Inc., dates back to 1850. Founded by Abe Mayer and originally called Abe Mayer & Co., the importer did business throughout the Southeast U.S. as well as Central and South America. In the 1930s that the company took on the official trademark of UCAGCO and began expanding overseas. After WWII, the company’s agent in Japan, S.A. Stolaroff signed the very first contract allowing imports from Japan. A talented ceramic designer himself, Stolaroff worked alongside many Japanese potteries to lead the company’s line of ceramics. In 1956, UCAGCO was sold to Sammons Enterprises.
Source: Gotheborg
Does this mean that any item sporting a sticker with “UCAGCO” made in Japan, is at least 58 years old (1956) ? Is there a catalog where these items are listed? Thanks for considering these questions, and posting this informative web page.
John & Elisa
Thanks for the information. Before Google and the internet, I had looked for trademark information about Ucagco, but never found anything.
I am looking for a horse drawn sleigh with wire carriage with two figures seated in sleigh the age would be around 50 years I broke mine and wish to replace any direction would be helpful
Your best bet is to do a google image search and look for one that is the same as yours. Just enter your keywords (sleigh,ucagco,horses, for example) in the regular search and scroll down to the images listing. Expand that and search through the images. Click on any you find to see what sites on the web might carry yours. Or you can go to the image search function directly. Try different keywords to make your search as thorough as possible.