Diary of a Dishie just turned 2. It’s not every blog gets to be 2 years old, and have a party to celebrate using beautiful dishes.
This blog is for everyone who loves vintage dinnerware and china, glassware and related items. It is about the dishes, the thrill of the hunt, and how to use and enjoy your finds.
Just in the last day, I got to speak with a customer who will be the lucky recipient of some beautiful, vintage aqua glassware. We talked about the colors of this pattern, Soreno by Anchor Hocking, made around 1970. It’s fun to compare notes with a fellow dish hunter, and get to share enjoyment of this kind of glassware and dinnerware.
As part of our birthday party for the blog, it has also been enjoyable to review prior posts. Some highlights of the first two years:
Tea at Adare Manor in County Limerick, Ireland
Tips on creating a Mother’s Day table setting
Visits to Chef Lynn Miller to find out about her cookbook, Flavor Secrets, and see her wonderful dish collection
These and many other posts are another form of handling the “loot” of various dinnerware hunting trips.
And that birthday cake with the pink frosting, oh was that good. It came from the bakery in a local specialty grocery, Holiday Market. A very nice chocolate cake, generously frosted. Served on a vintage china dessert plate, along with a good cup of tea.
In the coming year, Diary of a Dishie will continue to explore vintage dinnerware, china, glassware and everything else we all love in that line, with perhaps a surprise or two along the way to help you express your favorite table setting ideas. Painting with dishes…
Isn’t it fun to share your best china and dinnerware with your family and friends? Use the paper plates for picnics. For parties at home, holidays and other get-togethers, bring out your lovely dishes and let them remind you of special times — birthday or otherwise — all year round. Create some wonderful new memories, too.
Think of New England, Early American or traditional design, and your mind can easily conjure an image of a comfortable home with rooms filled with folk art and rustic antiques from more than 200 years ago.
This look is not for everyone, but for those who own homes that fit this style, setting a traditional table with the right china and stoneware can add a special touch to your family get-togethers and events.
Pfaltzgraff has been called “America’s potter” because the company has a long history. Five generations of family ownership over more than 150 years saw the company produce millions of pieces of pottery, dinnerware and table accessories. Your mother, grandmother and even further generations back, could easily have owned Pfaltzgraff.
Of the many patterns still in production, three stand out as classic for traditional table setting. These patterns have stood the test of time because they are so perfect for setting a table when Americana is your theme.
Very few china patterns, by any maker, get to celebrate anniversaries of 30 or 40 years in production.
Yorktowne was introduced in 1967. This dinnerware was inspired by early 19th century handpainted motifs, and blue tones of the company’s early salt-glazed stoneware.
Heritage came out in 1963. Collectors of vintage glass will recognize the name Georges Briard, but may not know that he designed this ware. The stoneware pieces are multi-sided shapes, glazed in classic white, a very traditional, architectural look.
Village was released around 1975-76, the time of the American bicentennial. Its warm, earthy tones of brown and rich butter yellow complement many traditional table settings.
There are hundreds of different pieces made in each of these patterns, from the standard place setting items, to metal pieces and flatware, fabric table linens and glassware.
A fourth pattern, America, was made during the 1980s but is no longer in production. Nevertheless, it has its fan base and pieces are available in the secondary market. This ware features green and blue sponge-decorated rims on a warm yellow background, and different Early American motifs on many of the larger pieces, such as birds and houses.
Here are a few ideas for accessorizing a traditional table setting:
Combine with metal pieces in copper and pewter
Select table cloths and napkins in fabrics like linen, cotton or raw silk
Use candles made from beeswax to add charming detail to your table setting
Most of all, use and enjoy your dinnerware. Pfaltzgraff is available in the new and secondary marketplace, so there is always a way to obtain additional pieces in your traditional Pfaltzgraff pattern.
No matter what china patterns you have, bring them out often and create special family meals using dishes you love.
We enjoy using vintage Corelle dinnerware, as well as Corning Ware bowls and casseroles. Lots of these are available in the marketplace. What should you look for when search for these dishes to add to your collection?
Modern Corelle and Corning pieces are more resistant to washing in the dishwasher, but the vintage pieces that are 30, 40 or even 50 years old (for Corning), should be hand washed to preserve their beauty.
Maple syrup is so good on pancakes, French toast and waffles. Once you’ve had real maple syrup, it’s hard to go back to ordinary syrup.
Glass or plastic dispensers make it easy to serve your syrup at the dining table. You can also heat a glass container in a bowl of hot water if you like your maple syrup warm. Many of the plastic models are microwaveable.
When the meal is over (because pancakes are great for breakfast, lunch or dinner) just put the server away in the refrigerator for the next time.
Glass servers are available in many styles to coordinate with your dinnerware. Pfaltzgraff produces glass dispensers in several styles to go with selected patterns of the dinnerware.
And check out that restaurant ware loaded with a luscious stack of hot pancakes, too.
Maple syrup comes from North America
Maple syrup is produced in New England, the Great Lakes and eastern Canada. Farmers tap their trees in the early spring, and boil the sap down to make this sweet, golden syrup. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, and it doesn’t harm the trees.
Syrup is graded according to color and flavor. These variations are often compared to the different types of wine or beer. Lighter syrups have a lighter, more delicate flavor. Darker syrups are known for a more pronounced, robust maple flavor.
For use on your table at home, it comes down to personal preference. Grade A light amber is a favorite, but so are the darker grades including Grade B, with its knock-your-socks-off maple flavor.
Unopened maple syrup will keep indefinitely, but once you open a bottle of maple syrup, refrigerate it. Every weekend can be special with homemade pancakes and maple syrup, and your casual dinnerware will be a perfect choice to create a special family meal.
You know the kind of local restaurant I’m talking about. Mom and Pop. Everybody knows your name. Not a cookie cutter, nor a cliché. A neighborhood one-of-a-kind. The orders are called out loud to the short order cooks, and the clatter of china is common.
A waitress carrying three, four, or more full meals balanced carefully up her arm darts between tables. Heavy china serves a wide array of comfort food, like steaming coffee, luscious stacks of pancakes, massive salads, substandial steaks and hand-formed burgers with grill-toasted buns.
The hardworking china they use is called restaurant ware. It has a smaller but passionate following of loyal collectors. Once it hooks you, you will see it a mile off in your garage sale and thrift store hunts.
This is the heavy dinnerware that says “1950s diner” as soon as you see it. It was made for food service in casual restaurants, as well as on airlines, trains and for institutions for many years. And this ware is still made by companies whose names you may know if you are familiar with china: Homer Laughlin, Syracuse and Buffalo to name only a few.
A lot of the pieces are plain white but some have color borders, and others have intricate transfer patterns in the rims. Some wares commissioned by colleges, rail lines and restaurant chains have logos and emblems to identify the ware as theirs, like the stuff I ate off of for four years in the 1970s, in college at Indiana University.
I worked in the dish room for a while, and got very familiar with this china.
Restaurant ware has to be durable to take the constant wear from heavy use it gets. It is fired at a high temperature, and early wares touted this by marking the pieces as “vitrified,” which means that the pieces are fired to make the glass glazing form a tight coating over the pottery underneath. Earlier wares were more porous, and sometimes water or other liquids could get under the glaze and darken the pieces.
To start collecting restaurant ware, coffee mugs can be an obvious choice. There are many of them, and you can find them pretty easily once you know what to look for. Besides the makers mentioned above, look for Sterling, Mayer, Shenango and Iroquois as well.
Clean restaurant ware the same way as you would any other collectible china that you have. It can take rougher handling, but to keep it free of chips or cracks, we recommend hand washing and drying.
If you love the vintage and retro look on your table, restaurant ware can be a new horizon of adventure in collecting china that you can use and enjoy.
This is an inexpensive glass knick-knack, a curio from about 100 years ago.
It is shaped like a smoking pipe in a general way. The bowl is hollow, but the stem is not. Perhaps it could be used to hold toothpicks, but otherwise it’s decorative. If you were to get the hand painted design wet, the paint would wash off.
These pipes are for sale on eBay any day of the week in the $5 to $15 range. But of course, there’s more to the story.
Leonidas is a small town in the southern tier of Michigan counties, a wide spot in the road. I’m sure the city fathers had higher aspirations when they named their town, because its namesake was Leonidas, heroic king of Sparta. He led a band of 300 Greek warriors at Thermopylae. They held off a massive Persian army, for a time. Their reward was death to the last man, but the battle is remembered even today.
Leonidas is no vacation spot like Niagara Falls. Yet why would the owner of small town general store order a novelty like this to sell to his customers?
My answer, for the same reason you could sell almost anything online, as recently as a few years ago. It’s the curiosity factor.
In the early 1900s, the Industrial Revolution was still building up steam. More people could afford to have manufactured goods, like a glass pipe to sit on a shelf and collect dust. The goods were nicer and cheaper than most of what they already owned.
It was something to talk about. Maybe the price figured in, but it was the story that sold it.
Of course, this tale has another chapter.
My grandfather was probably the original owner of the Leonidas pipe, but it could have been another relative. His father and family lived on a farm outside Leonidas, about 100 years ago, from about 1900 until his father passed in 1919.
That’s how this pipe went from cheap souvenir to precious family heirloom.
The pipe came into my grandfather’s household, he married my grandmother, and in 1927 he moved his family from Michigan to Oregon. A small item like this would have been easy to pack and take along.
Sentimental value doesn’t take up a lot of room.
For this same reason, it was easy to bring the pipe back to Michigan in 1929, after my grandfather died tragically. His widow returned with four children, and a little bit of history.
My father had the pipe for many years. After he passed, my mother gave it to me. I wanted it because I’d done the family research to rediscover that Leonidas had been a hometown in our family’s history.
The Leonidas pipe may be small. But it is also a memento of a quietly heroic story, about a man who moved his family across the country in search of a better life, though he died before he could achieve it.
The lesson is to enjoy those precious things. Their intrinsic value is often small. Their stories and their meaning: priceless.
Trinkets don’t have to be 100 years old to be treasures.
A friend of mine cherished a dark red plastic tsotchke, a large figurine ship with people on it. This piece was made to look like carved stone, but it was really resin. I called it a dragon boat, because the ship was dragon shaped and it was from China. I’m sure there is some legend, myth or significance to the piece, but otherwise it is made to sit on a shelf.
You can buy stuff like this for $10 or $20 lots of places. But again, this piece had a story. It had been a parting gift to her father from his Chinese graduate students in the 1980s. It meant far more to her than its street value.
The boat had been packed away for many years, but eventually it came to sit prominently in her bedroom. She got to enjoy it for the last 18 months of her life. Two weeks ago, she passed.
The lesson comes back around. If you have special items that have a touching story behind them, let them have a place of honor in your home, where you can see and enjoy them. Get them out and use them.
Perhaps it is a cereal bowl in the same pattern that you had when you went to grandma’s house. Or a teacup in your mother’s best china pattern.
Whatever the small precious things may be at your house, I encourage you to enjoy them. They will remind you of special people and special times. Their stories can go on, and warm your heart, regardless of what may happen next.
Every time I’ve seen aquamarine glassware, it has caught me eye. It’s a color from the late 1960s, early 1970s. Of course, what goes around comes around, and this sea green variation is back as the turquoise of 2010 fashion and style.
Global color authority Pantone declared 2010 as the year of turquoise, referencing its color no. 15-5519. This green shade of turquoise combines “the serene aspects of blue” with “the invigorating aspects of green,” according to the company.
This color is reminiscent of tropical lagoons and some mountain lakes. A blue version of turquoise was the selected color in 2005.
Dinnerware fashions come and go, and turquoise is no exception. Whether they are an exact match, or close complement, there are retro and vintage dinnerware and glassware patterns, as well as some new ones, with colors that fit into the green-blue turquoise or aqua category.
Some of these wares are solid turquoise or aqua green in color. Others have mixed color combinations. Some of our favorites include:
Bryn Mawr from the Parisienne line by Royal Jackson
Meredith by Lenox
Sunshine Orchard by Mikasa
Boulder Ridge by Noritake
Tempo by Style House
Aquamarine glassware in the Milano and Soreno patterns by Anchor Hocking
Aqua glassware in the Eye Winker pattern by Mosser
There are many more patterns that include the color turquoise in dinnerware and glassware available in both the new and secondary marketplaces.
At our house, anything that goes with blue can mix in a table setting, and this color will be easy to use.
Make mixing and matching table settings up to the minute in 2010 style by including some turquoise, aqua or aquamarine in your color palette. Your vintage wares can sparkle with some up-to-the-minute style, and your table setting ideas will come to beautiful life, for events of all kind this year.
Bag two birds with one stone: eat at home more, and enjoy an easy to make, moist chocolate cake at the same time. How can you go wrong?
Baking at home can help you save money, eat healthier because you control the ingredients, and provide a chance to experiment and tweak recipes to suit your situation.
If cake is a family favorite, learning to bake a simple snack cake can be a good place to start.
Follow the link to the recipe for my favorite chocolate cake recipe, which also includes an easy cooked chocolate frosting. Make this in a 9×9 square pan. You can even mix up the cake in the pan, if you wish.
If you have another favorite, such as coconut or spice cake, there are plenty of online recipe sites and videos available to help you get comfortable before you ever go into the kitchen. Gain experience by starting with a simple recipe and those resources will help you become an accomplished home cook.
Any cake that is made as one layer in a pan can be considered a snack cake.
These are handy to make for after-school treats, sack lunches and for casual parties or dinners
The techniques are simple, and the ingredients list is relatively short, using mostly standard pantry items.
Snack cakes can usually be made ahead to help smooth out event planning.
By starting out with something that is easy, you can learn by cooking, and you get to eat the tasty results. Once you have baked a few recipes, you will be better able to evaluate each new recipe you are considering, and decide whether it is something you want to make.
How to serve snack cake
Use your vintage dessert plates, or salad plates. Any plate that is in the 7 to 9 inch range works well, depending on the size of your cake slices, and whether you will serve it with ice cream or not.
Plan to add ice cream for birthday parties, showers and similar events. A coupe shape plate (smooth with slightly raised sides), or even a shallow soup bowl, works well to keep any melted ice cream on the dish.
Dress up this cake for a more formal event by cutting the pieces smaller and serving on fine china bread plates in the 4.5 to 6 inch diameter range. An edible flower or small decoration in the frosting (perhaps one that picks up the colors or motif of the china) adds a special touch for a tea party or shower.
Snack cakes are easy to whip up anytime for a quick dessert. Learning to bake can be even more fun when you enjoy the delicious results along with family and friends.
Think of savory soups or stews, cooked long and slow at home. Then casseroles, big pots of baked beans, chili and cabbage rolls. These are often made on the stove top or in the oven. Then in 1971, the Crock Pot by Rival came onto the marketplace and expanded the possibilities in home cooking.
Today, the generic term slow cooker is used alongside the brand name Crock Pot. The various modern models are the busy home cook’s friend. Many classic comfort foods are also slow cooker classics, easy to make and easy to serve in bowls to warm family and friends snowy winter evenings.
The original Crock Pot was an innovation at that time. I remember when these came out, and they were as hot as any modern, small kitchen appliances you see advertised now.
These practical cooking tools have evolved into multi-tasking heavyweights. They have lots of bells and whistles that your mother and grandmother would have wanted. There is a broad range of sizes, from 1 quart to 7 quart, even 8 quart capacity. The newest models include programming features, multiple temperature settings, multiple and removable stoneware inserts, hinged lids, clamp-on lids, and the list goes on.
Slow cookers continue to be popular because they serve the needs of busy moms and home cooks to make easy, delicious meals for their families. You can create a meal, set it cooking, and have dinner underway while doing other tasks. Or, cook the meal overnight, refrigerate it while you are away from home, and reheat it at dinner time in your microwave.
The innovations found in today’s cookers are born directly from customer experience over the years. Stoneware inserts are removable for cleaning. Temperature controls allow for a broad range of cooking methods, and programmable features let you control the settings as your dish cooks. Some even include a probe which is inserted into the meal, to monitor the progress of recipes that require the food to reach a certain temperature.
Consider these things when you shop for the best slow cooker for your household:
Choose a size that you will fill at least half but no more than two-thirds full, so that the food gets hot enough, but does not overflow while cooking. Large capacity models are in the 4 to 7 quart range, with small capacity in the 1 to 4 quart range.
The locking lids, available on some models, are made to help you transport the unit with food in it. These are handy for carry-in dinners, potlucks and buffets.
Models with oval-shape stoneware liners (vs. round) work better for roasts, whole chickens and similar foods. Choose yours based on size and shape of the foods you cook the most.
Removable stoneware liners make clean up easier.
You won’t want to save your slow cooker for annual potluck dinners once you discover all the luscious recipes that you can make with your cooker. Everything from a hot breakfast to a hot toddy can be made in a slow cooker.
Many vintage china patterns are based on the perennial garden favorite flower, roses. No surprise, roses are romantic and feminine. Many of the dinnerware designs that use this motif have a soft, pastel color scheme.
Make roses your theme for mix and match table setting and the possibilities are enormous. Whether you are planning an intimate Valentine’s Day tea with a group of close friends, or a birthday party for special friends, a buffet for a wedding shower, or Sunday dinner on Mother’s Day, rose-motif dinnerware can serve your purpose well.
All the major china manufacturers have made patterns in the old-fashioned language of flowers, though some of those are now discontinued. The language of roses, based on their colors, can bring a subtle message to your table setting.
Red is for passion and romantic love
Pink is for sincere affection and sweet regard
White is for purity and virtue
Yellow is for friendship and devotion
The majority of vintage china patterns that feature roses are made in porcelain, fine china or bone china. Choose dishes in one of these high-quality materials for a Valentine’s Day ladies tea or luncheon, and plan to use your special china patterns.
Extra or missing pieces of china are widely available in shops and online. Take some photos of your existing pieces to help you shop. This will make it easier to compare those pieces you need to complete the color scheme and theme, as well as those needed to serve particular food and beverages for the number of guests you will have.
If you are just starting your rose china collection, here are some lovely china patterns with roses in the design:
Romance by Diamond China
Adela by Mikasa
Spring Vista by Lenox
Bellemead by Noritake
Promise, Bavarian china
Sweetheart by Arlen
Ice Rose by Wedgwood
Snow Rose by Amcrest
American Rose by Camelot
Tudor Rose by Style House
Most of these are vintage patterns. They represent only a tiny percentage of the beautiful fine china patterns that you can experiment with to enhance your romantic table setting.
Just mix and match your china and enjoy painting with dishes as a creative outlet. And above all, have a wonderful, beautiful time hosting a special event with family and friends.
Photo: Roses have inspired many dinnerware patterns
Top row: Roses from my garden. Adela by Mikasa sauce boat, detail of Romance by Diamond
Large photo: Tudor Rose by Style House
Center right: Vintage Rose by Waverly
Lower right: Moss Rose by Diamond
