Granny's China

 The good news is that I have taken on getting a couple of things accomplished toward the goal of moving some things out of the house. Om is going to be gone for a few days, and doing this project is temporarily making a huge mess until I get it sorted, so I thought this would be a good time to tackle it.

The bad news is that after years of trying to get all the boxes of this collected in one place, Geez, Louise! I am still missing some of this. There has to be at least one more box somewhere because most of the cups and all the saucers are missing.

This is Theodore Haviland Limoges China in the Green Floral Schleiger design. The line was begun in 1903. Granny was married in 1906, and I'm guessing it was purchased soon thereafter, or as part of the wedding gifts.

After hearing all my friends' horror stories about getting rid of family china, I wasn't expecting to find much good news on the value front. However. These are genuine, pre WWI.

Not only that, but they are still open stock, so broken pieces can be replaced. And I'm finding good prices on even single antique place settings.

I have 12 dinner plates, 12 soup plates, a soup toureen with lid, 3 platters, sugar and creamer, gravy boat, 2 serving dishes with lids, at least 8 small soup cups, and the missing cups and saucers.

Only one cup and the creamer have any damage with slight cracks.

Here's a closeup of one of the soup plates. These are the older style soup dishes that are flatter and spread the soup out more. I've always liked that style. But these dishes are WAY too fussy for me. I already have two sets of my own tableware (none as fancy or delicate as this), and enough of my mother's china to set a table for 4, and two other settings of 4. I DO NOT WANT or need this china.

I have all of these washed and sorted. I wanted a cloth surface to put them on, so I got out one of the cutwork linen tablecloths that the same grandmother made. As I've mentioned many times, she was very talented. Also, she liked nice things.

It's one of the mysteries to me that she came from a farm background, and leapt into a lifestyle that was several steps above her roots. She married a lawyer, so I guess they could afford it. That said, many things that I'd always been told were worth money have turned out to be reproductions or not very high quality examples of whatever it was. So, I'm pretty happy if this china might actually be worth something.

But now I have a new dilemma. I need to find the rest of this to be able to do anything further with it. Since I thought I had it all collected, this could be problematic. I can't leave it all on the table indefinitely, and I really don't want to pack it away AGAIN, even though it's sorted.

And what's it sorted from? Ha! Another whole set of china, a lovely art deco tea set that I actually like, some very fancy glassware, miscellaneous family dishes that I had been wondering where they were. I'll wash the rest of that another day. But I've now emptied 7 big cartons of china and glassware into the dining room.

There actually is other news as well. I edited. I hand-washed something else. I dealt with half a basketball-size cabbage until I got sick of chopping. I'll try to finish that tomorrow.

See Emily Marguerite Fisher Rowe