Plainsman Shakers #5HS: 1950-
I originally assumed that Frankoma introduced this smaller Plainsman set at the same time as the rest of the dinnerware designs, generally thought to be 1948. The 5HS, however, does not appear in the catalogs until 1950. Frankoma used Ada clay to make this shape for only three years. Those first short plainsmans are hard to find.
The Short Plainsman shakers appeared only in dinnerware glazes for the first few years. Prairie green and desert gold dominate the Ada shakers but red bud and clay blue are available. Onyx black should be available on Ada clay but I have not seen it.
The switch to red Sapulpa clay did little to change this shaker line except to make the rutile glazes sharper and more distinctive. Frankoma made the first Plainsman shaker design change about 1962.
The first design for the 5HS had pour holes on both sides of each shaker. The diner could fling salt and pepper in both directions on a single shake! The hole arrangement changed sometime about 1962. A final change occurred In the late 1960's when Frankoma started to glaze the bottoms of the shakers.
In 1976 when Frankoma dropped production of the 24H (earlier 7H) tall Mayan-Aztec shakers they dropped the “s” from the 7HS so the short Mayan-Aztec shakers became simply 7H. They made this same change with the 5HS in 1976 although that designation appeared in catalogs from 1955-1975 even though the 5H was out of production.