Hello all and thank you for checking back in with me! I am still hard at work writing but I took a break for some thrifting at my favourite local jumble sale this weekend. So many treasures again this year, but I'll spare you (most of) the book haul in favour of two platters.
They're both from Grindley and... well, I just really liked them. And I didn't want to see them get broken up and used for a garden table mosaic if nobody else bought them, when they're in great shape with no crazing to keep me from using them to hold rolls or neatly folded meats at a lunch buffet. Assuming I ever host a lunch buffet. Stranger things have happened!
As an aside, I also acquired these beautiful cotton/linen tea towels recently, via eBay. They are I think about two feet long! which is welcome when you are doing a lot of hand-drying, let me tell you.
Back to china. I scored this fantastically huge bowl which is impossible to photograph so I hope you can make do with this pic:
It's about 14.5" wide across the top and has deep embossed circles in it. Only pressed glass, and it's got many bubbles and imperfections, but I absolutely love it. Mind you it's a commitment. I don't own a cupboard big enough to stash it in, so it's going to have to be out all the time, and I'll have to think of different uses for it to get through all the seasons.
I am up for that challenge.
Books were of course a primary focus for me at the sale and I was thrilled to pick up a bunch of 1950s Bobbsey Twins stories for a friend who collects them (not pictured.) My own obsession was vintage Agatha Christies and I did get quite a number of editions I don't already have, plus a collection of her plays (pictured!)
The spritz cookie press is so amazing, isn't it? This is a less recent acquisition - a friend picked it up as a present for me at a different jumble-y sale, and I was blown away when I opened it. It has never been used, for one thing. And who could resist that box cover art? Plus, I did actually use a spritzer just like this with my mum when I was little, so that was very moving. I will have to reanimate my passion for spritz cookies and put this lil guy through its paces.
Okay there is one more thing I want to show you, and it is the item I bought home at the last minute when the extraordinarily nice lady at the china table said, "I think this would be really fun at Christmas, don't you? You should get it!" and I could not disagree.
When I got it unpacked and washed, it puzzled me. The trademark on the back references Limoges, but the front does not look like Limoges. More like... 2012 dollar store reproduction? I looked it up, and apparently there are made-in-China reproduction Limoges, and also fake Limoges masquerading as the real thing. This could be either of those less than ideal options. Still, something about it still didn't fit. Yes, there are paint splodges on the back of the plate around the rim where somebody got careless, but there are also some age marks on it that I've seen on some of my older dishes. So I did some more digging and you know what?
Given the trademark on the back, the plate is probably circa 1905.
And the lines look a bit uneven because it was hand painted, possibly by an amateur. Because, and this is the ultimate New To Me for today: around that time, a hobby sprang up around buying blank china pieces (as from Limoges) and painting them, either alone at home or in groups at a party. Some people even set up as a commercial enterprise. I gather there were standard sorts of designs you could buy to work from. Perhaps this is one, but I couldn't find any other examples of it online so maybe it was done freehand.
Apparently I am slow off the mark on this one because my friend Jan already knew all about it when I told her. It's kinda cool though, right? While we use up our spare time knitting stuff, we could be hand-painting china tea services. All that gold paint, though... musta been messy.
Either way: I am so glad I brought this home to give it another twenty or thirty years of admiration. If I'm right about somebody painting it in 1905, it's survived a few generations of owners before landing at the rummage sale. It would've been a real shame if it went into the bin after all that.
And now it's time for me to get back to the rest of my writing retreat. Another three weeks - see you here again on May 31! Have fun in the meantime and thanks again for dropping by.
No comments:
Post a Comment