Vigo County Historical Society

Museum serves up memories with its fine china display

Spode, Limoge, Haviland from France and Royal Staffordshire from England. Visit the first floor of the museum and beautiful colors will seem to leap out from an antique china cabinet full of bowls, plates and serving dishes.

You will see colors such as Chelsea Blue, Bitter Chocolate, Canary Yellow and Alpine Green, which is used to outline leaves around roses.

Do you have memories of certain dishes from your past? I do. Newly married in 1948, the time came to take table scraps outside one evening. Dishes were dirty, so I put all the scraps on a wedding gift of a beautiful Bavarian handpainted bowl.

Carefully stepping outside with the bowl, I didn’t dodge our newly acquired puppy dog who jumped up for petting. Result, one broken antique bowl on the sidewalk. I gave the dog away to my sister the next day. I had learned my lesson of being careful.

Two years later, I had received from relatives another big handpainted bowl. Carefully placing the bowl on the back seat of the car, I carefully drove homeward when suddenly I stopped for a stoplight. Result, several pieces of the antique bowl on the floorboard of the car. I had exactly one half hour to love that bowl.

Later, my husband built us a large house with tile flooring in all the rooms. No rugs yet. My 10-year old son put his skates on and enjoyed skating backwards in the front room until he crashed into my china cabinet where I had seven antique pitchers. Didn’t have time to cry, as I had to rush son to the hospital with his cut hand.

Once in the eighth grade, our project was to bring something that was more than 100 years old. A neighbor woman loaned me a bone china saucer, explaining that good china when gently struck with a finger made a beautiful bell tone sound but the same finger on regular china just went plunk. I still ping dishes in stores.

In the 1890s, women met for painting parties of dishes and to have a social outlet. Patterns for painting flowers were shared and sometimes the paint also. The price of gold trim is now so high that it seems hand painting is going out of style.

I once asked a friend about her large collection of fine china and she replied that she and her sister always had given their own dish pattern as a gift for special occasions such as birthdays and holidays.

I’ve had a fairly large collection of china, but sad to say most of it lives only in my memory. Come and view part of the collection of antique plates at the museum and renew some of your own memories!