It’s raining today and it looks to be an all day long rain. I have some little projects to take care of here and this weather is a good excuse to take care of them.
There’s something about the shape of a coneflower that just makes me happy. I think of them as one of the best flowers for a country garden.
A slightly ruffled edge on this day lily. Old-fashioned and romantic.
The endless summer hydrangea in the memorial garden.
If you follow along with me on Instagram, you’re aware of this story, but for those of you who don’t, let me share it with you.
We live in a house that was built in 1891 and from evidence around the property, it was a farmhouse. Many years ago, it was routine to bury trash on the property as there was no other way to dispose of it. Over the almost-twelve years we’ve lived here, I’ve encountered all sorts of things, among them a tea cup handle, part of a Homer Laughlin Harlequin plate, bones, paper wrapping, hose nozzles, a handle for a plastic toy phone, etc. After some time – because of erosion or rain or whatever – things rise to the surface.
A day or so after I got home, I was walking in the corral – I must have just finished mowing – and I saw the edge of a piece of pottery protruding from the ground. I pulled it out and quickly discovered two other large pieces and a couple of very small ones.
This is what I found:
Red transferware. I oohed and aahed and shared my discovery with Don and placed them on the kitchen windowsill.
Yesterday, I tried to piece them together, not knowing if they were random pieces or belonged together.
They fit. I also have that smaller pieces that is missing from the bottom left. I’d say this is a salad plate/bread and butter plate, given the size. Isn’t it beautiful?
Well, I got online and spent hours looking at transferware patterns and, so far, I haven’t found this particular pattern.
Don and I were so intrigued that we went back to the same area and dug a bit. In addition to a chain and some old paper, we found one more small piece of the plate and a couple of pieces that turned out to fill what were shallow chips on the bottom of the plate. I haven’t found a piece that has a marking on it. And darn it, I know they’re there! But they could be anywhere in the corral. However, since these pieces were next to each other in the ground, I am led to believe more are nearby.
This must be what an archaeologist feels like. Sort of. There is a ‘dig’ going on in the corral.
I’ve sent a message to Nancy of Nancy’s Daily Dish – a blog/website that focuses on her extensive collection of transferware – maybe she might know the pattern.
Does it look familiar to any of you?
I love a mystery and I am so intrigued by this one. How old is it? What owner, long ago, used it? Is it in the trash because it broke one day? Are there more pieces out there and where are they???
Happy Monday.
oh, what a beautiful plate and mystery! hope you will keep digging and share your findings with us (please and thanks).
jealous of your all-day rain … enjoy!
kathy in iowa
It’s a nice rainy day, Kathy, and I’m enjoying it. I will keep you apprised of more ‘plate’ findings!
ps: love how you and don follow impulses to dig in the dirt for more pieces of that plate, to stop wherever you wanted on your trip across the country …
Don has taught me to be more spontaneous and I have helped him to be a bit less so. It’s a good balance.
balance is good!
kathy in iowa
I keep striving for it!
Well…I real live mystery! I find this exciting….hope you keep on digging. It’s a pretty pattern…..sorry, no help here. Keep us posted if you find more pieces! ;).
I will, Donnamae! I have my fingers crossed.
What a fun discovery!
I know!
I’m so glad you contacted Nancy. She has such a wealth of knowledge on transferware. I love that you dug around for more pieces. Your blooms are so pretty, I love cone flowers but don’t have any around here this year. I’m slowing getting better from my Summer cold but it’s made me stay inside a lot this past week. Not the mention the heat! Watched a movie last night, LION, it was really good. Hugs!
Glad you’re starting to feel better, Linda! This rain is a welcome relief from the heat and humidity we’ve had lately.
That is so beautiful, Claudia! I’d glue the pieces that fit together and display it in a shadow box frame with a handwritten note stating when and where you found it, and the date/pattern info if you ever track it down!! Such a great find!
I was thinking of doing that very thing. I really want to find out the name of the pattern. And more pieces!
My grandparents would burn their garbage out back of their house that was close to the path down to the garden.
I am wondering if the dish that you found may be a Copeland Spoke made in England. I have a couple of teacups that are similar in pattern and coloring. My friend found the teacups at a thriftstore and she gave them to me. And they are displayed with my blue and white dishes.
Wanted to say how cool what you found. Be curious to see what other discoveries you will make
Looked at the back of my blue and white–it is also a Copeland Spode but it is a remake of the authentic patterns. Whereas the teacups are older than the plates (Copeland Spode Tower). Will be interesting to see what your friend will say about your find.
I have two small plates in Spode’s Claudia pattern, sent to me by my dear friend Donna.
It’s awfully exciting when something emerges from the earth around these parts!
I thought it might be Spode but now a reader has found the pattern – it’s from the 1830s. See my reply to Michele in the comments.
My father’s family lost its longtime summer house, a converted mill, to a hydroelectric project in the late 1930s. We were exploring the woods around it one day about twenty- five years later, when Dad picked up several shards of what had been his aunt’s china.
Great find you’ve made. I hope someone can identify maker and pattern for you. Wouldn’t it be fun to see if you could find enough of it to set the table for the two of you? Let us know how it comes out.
How wonderful that he found some of his aunt’s china! Michele has identified the maker – Enoch Wood & Sons – from the Belzoni series, made in the 1830s. I’m swooning a bit, Margaret.
What fun! It seems to have come in black and blue as well as the pink. Maybe brown and green, too.
I love that it’s so old!
What a great mystery. When I was little (and probably still, now) if I found something like that I would immediately make up a story about the piece, who owned it, how it was broken, why it was left in the garden…. and on and on. I don’t know if many kids look “down” anymore unless it is at some sort of screen in their hand. Now I REALLY sound old. Hope you receive some info!!
We don’t have rain today, but the heat and humidity have broken. The windows are open and that makes me quite happy. Hope you have a fine, albeit rainy Monday!!
If you sound old, so do I!
From what I found on Pinterest if this should be correct as I’m not an expert in transferware, “10 inch plate from the “Belzoni” series made by Enoch Wood & Sons (1818-1846). It is part of a series that shows a different scene on almost every size and shape. The pattern owes its name to Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778-1823), an Italian adventurer and entertainer who settled in England.” Sounds like you found something pretty spectacular, but don’t quote me.
Oh my god, Michele, you’re right! I researched it further and I found a platter (in the series) that is a different color but is this pattern. Thank you so, so much! I think I do have something pretty spectacular! It was made in the 1830s.
Claudia, this is one more of the really intriguing blog posts here. I know only a bit of what you’re going through but it IS an incredible feeling; the thrill of the dig (addictive!), further understanding of what an archaeologist feels like…or even your American Pickers which my husband has now enlightened me about (I can’t believe I never got into this on TV but we also weren’t getting the History channel). Doesn’t this still happen in fields where the American Civil War was fought, where I’ve read they’ll still find items of weaponry or even uniform buttons, kitchen items from the camp cooks, etc. ??
The family of one of my childhood friends has a vacation cabin in the Alabama Hills of California (“mining country” on the edge of the Sierras in Inyo County; Mt. Whitney, climbed by the legendary John Muir…and a lot of old Westerns were filmed here in the 1920s-1930s so there were remnants of movie sets). It was ‘frontier’ territory in the 1800s (it’s a desolate area, if you ask me!!) with one or more Native American tribes (I recall that Shoshone was one). We kids would find chiseled/carved arrowheads in the dry lake beds. And beads. Lots of colorful, tiny beads. It was over 50 years ago and I suppose today, any discoveries like that should go to a museum and not into private hands. It’s all probably more protected in these days, because I think there’s an actual reservation near the small town of Lone Pine; clearly, the Native Americans had been there long before beads were ever traded.
When I inherited my great-aunt’s cottage from the 1920s, the estate trustee was really p*ssed off that I got the house and she didn’t, although I didn’t find out WHY she was so p*ssed off until much later. (She got enough, but I guess she’d thought the house was hers, too; just so greedy and misguided…anyway…ancient history now, still painful to bring back to the surface.) In mean-girl retaliation, she stripped the house, inside and outside, and I mean stripped it, taking attached hardware and elements she wasn’t allowed to touch, and I considered a lawsuit against her but, at that point, after an already long legal battle, I just was trying to protect the house and keep it intact as much as possible, so my lawyer advised to let it go (her actions).
In the first five months after we finally got ownership, the house sat while we were waiting for architectural plans, permits, availability of our contractor, etc. I’d go to the house every day to check on it, sit there with the all-too-recent grief of losing my great-aunt, try to remember every detail of her furnishings and collections as it’d been the last time I was permitted to see it after she’d passed…it was a great time to sort out my head and also let the house ‘talk’ to me and tell me what it wanted and needed from us. I needed to figure out how to honor the memories but also make it our house now, for my husband and myself, which my practical aunt was trying to tell me from the grave. I’d watch the light change in the afternoon; where the sun streamed in through the old wavy windows. I’d look at the bones of the house with a new appreciation of how thoughtfully and beautifully it’d been built all those years ago. It was such a valuable time because we wound up throwing out a lot of our plans, realizing we should not alter the home’s footprint/blueprint to the degree we’d planned as it would not-appropriately change the character of the home. We had to learn these things, you see. We were novices at renovation or restoration.
And then I’d be walking around in reflection, inside and outside…and I, too, would stumble upon something, just like you did. A little metal tag identifying the name of her ancient, ancient rosebush; the thankfully-unchipped ceramic water bowl of her dog’s (who’d died in the 1950s before I was born, the bowl inscribed with his name and buried under a pile of old broken garden pots). In her customized crafts closet with the many shelves and cupboards behind two large doors, a tiny yarn doll wedged into a tight, dark, back corner, undetected (she made these!)…and, then, the most poignant, an intact glass creamer/pitcher which had fallen down somehow behind a kitchen cabinet and tucked into the wallboards, unseen (and from the pattern I remembered in her china hutch). As I write this, tears spring to my eyes because I miss her so much and I feel she put me on a treasure hunt as a little sign that all was well with her, like she as saying hello and holding my hand.
It’s lucky that the finder of your china pieces is YOU, who has an appreciation of history and pottery (also a person with heart). I love the idea of a shadow box. The only other thing I could think of would be to do a small mosaic…work with clay and stick the pieces into it, like a small tabletop or to decorate something, like a flower pot. I know we talk of Susan Branch here a lot, or at least I do, but she at this very moment, if it didn’t already get snapped up, has an item in her online store for sale which are indeed pieces of china cups…looks like maybe a shipment of her new cups didn’t make the trip from England very well and got broken, although that’s just a guess. Anyway, you’re so inventive at crafting, Claudia; you’ll find the exactly-right thing to do with this sweet find…although part of me feels it should stay with the house although, unfortunately, I’ve found that a successive owner doesn’t always share the same sentimentality.
PS: Another wondrous thing we found underneath my great-aunt’s house was a completely intact and preserved wooden easel…large…for an artist who’d perhaps paint on really-big canvas. It’s furthest point is as tall as my tall husband. Now, my aunt was not a painter, so this had to be from the first owner 1923-1928. The wood had suffered a bit from being on the dirt of the unfinished cellar for 75(?) years, so I made the (hard) decision to paint it (white) but I love having it in my house to display art, posters, whatever I choose. Oh, and another thing the vindictive trustee missed was a brass decorative plate on one of the interior doors which commemorated a place my great-aunt and great-uncle visited on one of their trips to Scotland (she was 100% Scot but first-generation American), so I’m saving that for a REALLY special place in my home as soon as I figure it out after remodeling…unless I, too, put most of the mementoes in a shadow box to give to my cousins for posterity (she was their auntie, too) although I’m not quite ready to give any of it up yet!
I’m most likely going to glue the pieces I have together and keep it in a safe display area, while looking for more pieces to show themselves. I’d love to find as much of it as I can. Mosaics don’t interest me on this one – trying to put it back together does!
How exciting. That pattern is lovely. Hope you find some more pieces and eventually discover the name.
Marilyn
We have learned the name – it’s in the comments, Marilyn – but I’ll write a bit about it tomorrow.
What a lovely plate and a wonderful mystery to go with it! So exciting.
I love a good mystery, Tana!
Yay! Mystery solved!..I spent about an hour last night looking at transferware with no luck…but I saw a lot of beautiful patterns and enjoyed trying to solve your mystery!!!…now I will have to go look it up by its name and have a good look at a complete plate…
I looked for hours myself, to no avail. Thank goodness for Michele!