94H Wagon Wheels, Crude "S", 1942
The crude "S" identification is important for several of Frankoma's early shakers, and especially for the wagonwheels and Myan-Aztec designs. I personally believe that these are the very first dinnerware shakers Frankoma made. The crude "S" appears in the wagon wheels picture in the 1942 and 1943 catalogs.
I find these shakers only in prairie green and the turquoise shown here. Do not confuse this glaze with the much different "1942 turquoise" listed in the guides. Some discussion arises, however, about this turquoise glaze and the clay used. Several of the Frankoma shaker lines from the mid-1940's use this turquoise glaze on a very red clay! The results are very confusing.
The standard explanation is that the glaze is the early 1950's turquoise and the clay is from the transition from Ada to Sapulpa in 1953. For several reasons I cannot make that explanation work across all of the shaker lines involved. I will not go into detail here, but plan to do a more complete analysis of this problem in another section of this site.
For now keep in mind that the crude "S" Wagon Wheels shakers are different, and they may not be all from the same period. They are rare even in the common dinnerware shaker lines.