Information on Vintage Dishes
If you have some of Grandma's colorful old dishes still in storage or in your kitchen cabinet, they might be worth decent money to a collector. From fine English china to glazed plaid dinner dishes, retro dinnerware comes in a variety of styles and can still be used for serving meals if it is in good condition.
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Vintage Plate Patterns
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The designs on vintage plates and dinnerware varied by manufacturer and year. The pattern may be floral, geometric, or nature inspired. Pattern names are derived from the design theme, for example, the Lenox "Rose Manor" has a delicate ivory color and a ring of stemmed red roses on the plate's edge. Bright apples flanked by green leaves decorate Blue Ridge Potteries' Apple dinner plate. A collector can determine a plate's manufacture date and company by locating the date stamp on the back of the dish. The china and dinnerware website DishesRUs lists 190 different manufacturers and their vintage patterns.
Vintage Restaurant and Company Dinnerware
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Some collectors specialize in restaurant dinnerware popularized by diners, company cafeterias, the military and drive-ins in from the early 1900s to the 1970s. You can find vintage dishes through flea markets, thrift stores, antique shops and specialty websites like The BeesKnees. Recognized vintage brands include Wellsville café china, which is often white plates with a brown or tan line around the side; Iroquois dinnerware, which is also white with two or three colored lines around the side; and Tepco, which is plain tan or white dishes. Vitrified, which means durable, non-chipping china, white plates with a scalloped pattern around the edge, used in hotels and passenger train food service, are also prized by vintage aficionados. Since restaurant dinnerware withstands heavy use, it can sometimes be used for meals despite its age.
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Vernon Kilns Plaid Dinnerware
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Hand-painted plaid dinnerware, produced by California's Vernon Kilns from 1936 to 1958, came in six different versions-Calico, Gingham, Homespun, Organdie, Tam O' Shater and Tweed. "Vernonware" dishes and dinnerware were made from earthenware and glazed with minerals from California. Vernonware has a bevy of ardent fans who run websites dedicated to the brand.
Decorative Dishes
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Ornamental dishes, with colorful painted or engraved scenes , make good items for curio cabinets and holiday displays. Gold trimmed Currier and Ives wall plates depicting winter scenes, a ceramic set of dishes featuring hand-painted pictures of flamenco dancers and French plates sporting a cartoon of hot air balloons are some examples of decorative dishes. They differ from mass-produced collectors' plates in that they often depict one-of-a-kind scenes painted by artists.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit dishes, fragment of ceramic plate image by Astroid from Fotolia.com
