AMERICAN BREWING COMPANY OF PEKIN, IL SERVING TRAY. Circa 1910

Featured is an impressive metal serving tray from the American Brewing Company which was in Pekin, Illinois prior to Prohibition.  This tray is a stock tray, meaning it is one where the image was sold to potential breweries, and the breweries simply had the manufacturing tray company insert their name on the tray.   This tray features an older man tilting his beer stein as if almost to say he is out of beer.   This image is very similar to another image which shows a monk in the same type of basement cellar who is pouring beer or even whiskey perhaps out of a wooden barrel.  The edge and coloring of these two trays are eerily similar, both from the 1900-1910 and produced by a tray company in Coshocton, OH.   The American Brewing Company used the wording “of Pekin” because there were many breweries at that time which called themselves The American Brewing Company, including one just south of Pekin based in St. Louis, MO.