10-inch tin plate with litho of blush-colored roses marked Enterprise Brewing Co

I was a little surprised when I turned over this plate and found that it had been made for the Prepro Enterprise Brewing Company, a relatively short-lived beer concern that opened in 1892 in the City by the Bay. San Francisco at the time (the several decades before World War I) was home to scores of breweries. This is not the surprising part, given that all of those people who had failed to line their pockets with gold dust were left to drown their sorrows -- or to make money off of other people's sorrows.

What did surprise me was the combination of painted tin and alcohol. I think of trays hand painted with pleasingly asymmetrical bunches of roses as an artifact of upper-class women who were banished from meaningful employment. Not breweries.

It's a funny old world.

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