Grandma's China

I read an article in the paper this weekend about inherited china.  The gist of it was that women to-day are not wanting their parents' patterned china but instead opting for plain white in pleasing shapes.  The article gave me a good laugh because after a lifetime of buying white china in pleasing shapes (the first, purchased in 1963 with wedding gift money, was white Mikasa in a rounded square shape), I am now the custodian of a hand painted Limoges service, pink rosebuds and green leaves painted on cream china with a gold border.  There are twelve place settings and every size and sort of service dish that you could imagine, dainty cups and saucers, even a pickle dish.  One daughter has my Mikasa.  The other got my mother's ornate service.

What is really funny is that I love Grandma's china.  Not the serving pieces, no.  They are ugly blobby shapes - as you can see from the photo - but they are right handy when serving a crowd because they have ugly blobby lids that keep the food warm.

I love the dear little tea cups that I use once a year, love the little fruit dishes, ditto, and have a sneaking pleasure in setting up a long table with it, using a pale green cloth and cream napkins, a pleasure that lasts until I have to hand wash the stuff.  It also looks pretty special at Christmas with a deep rose cloth and gold charger plates; each Christmas I use it my resolve weakens and I stuff it into the dishwasher, eroding the gold borders some more in the process.

Some of the gold borders on the serving pieces are pretty well gone.  You see, this service was my paternal grandmother's.  I don't know much about her because she died when I was only three but I suspect she chose this china.  It was probably fairly expensive even then, but her family was well off and pretty things and family things were important to her, I believe.  When she died, her daughter inherited the Limoges but it was always understood that it would come to me because my aunt was childless.  She was also meticulous and even though she used the set for almost sixty years it came to me intact after her death at 92, intact except for one carefully mended plate and the wear on the gold borders. I have to have two china cabinets to house all this stuff; as well as Grandma's china I have inherited glass and china from my other grandmother, from my mother and from two of her sisters, plus vases and other clutter both purchased and received as gifts.  Luckily I have a big dining room that will take a hutch and drawers on one side and a high sideboard on the other.  They are both crammed with all this stuff, some useful, some, like my mother's hollow stem champagne glasses, loved but not practical.  I also have a big kitchen with lots of cupboard space in which resides the china I use, a gift from my parents some twenty years ago and augmented by a legacy from one of JG's aunts who had the same pattern.  This china is Wedgwood Athena White, microwave and dishwasher safe in the main (Aunt May's legacy is an older version but it goes into the dishwasher anyway), white, plain and of a pleasing shape.  I have enough of it that, even allowing for breakage and using the old plates in the microwave (they come out crazed), I should be good until about 2030.

Around then I expect I shall turn up my toes and the whole mass will descend onto the slender shoulders of my one precious granddaughter.  I guess I had better leave her the cabinets too, poor thing.  At the moment she loves pink roses and, who knows, maybe by then Grandma's dishes will be right back in style.

This is an original post for Canada Moms Blog by Mary G.  When she is not washing dishes, Mary can be found blogging at Them's My Sentiments.