Get tea in your favorite cup and come on back and click here for musica! Today, we have lots of delicious photos, plenty of color, things for tea, dishes and cake! But first . . . hello kitty. ♥
I promised Em, one of our girlfriends, who’s doing some redecorating, that I would show another photo of my chair . . . she’s looking for this fabric, or something like it, and I don’t remember where I got this. If any of you decorators out there know what pattern this is, please leave a comment here for Em!
I’ve had several requests, so I thought I’d show you some of my dishes today! We have to start with my kitchen cupboard because it’s like a toy for grownups! My dad drove out from Arizona with his tool box and his dog, to help us move into our house. The first thing I asked him to do was to take off the cupboard doors so I could see my dishes. This is how it’s arranged today, but it’s gone through many changes: I find yellow glasses, out goes the clear ones; I find pink dishes, out go the purple ones. Pretty much everything came from yard sales and antique stores. You notice there’s a bowl full of kitty toys there. They’re everywhere. ♥
That’s a Johnson Brothers “Rose Chintz” teapot, a Martha’s Vineyard decorative plate, some of my Beatrix Potter people, an antique no-name brown transferware cup (with a singing bird on it!), my purple Windsor Ware china, some of my preferred fake fruit, topped off with my pink “Two Fond Hearts” plate!
These Minton cups belong to one of the girlfriends now . . . when my cupboards were full, I donated these to the Vintage section in our web store–I know they went to a good home! I hope she’s having a Valentine’s tea party to show them off! ♥
More cups, most of them have no manufacturer or pattern names on the bottom; great shelf for display, useful too, doesn’t take up too much space.
Salt and pepper shakers, perfect for every occasion! 🙂
Very old Minton creamers and teapot (no pattern name is on the bottom of this set of dishes!).
I love to mix old and new for informal tea parties. Emma mixes so well with antique dishes!
This little gem was all alone on an antique-store shelf when I found it; no name on bottom, no saucer, but look at it! Abigail Adams probably drank out of it! It should not be living alone!
You can mix your eras too . . . This yellow earthenware Oven Ware bowl perks up the Johnson Brothers Rose Chintz.
Love to mix and match dishes, some are one of a kind, but fit right in. This sauce bowl is English, Myott Son & Co “Swing Time” — and it’s the only piece of it I have.
Copeland Spode and Emma Bridgewater — those English people really know what they’re doing!
A little mish-mash of small cups, flower salt and peppers, and one of my pride and joys, a tiny Japanese tea-for-one set.
This china has nothing on the bottom! I think it should be famous! So pretty on a summer table outside under the arbor! ♥ Makes you want to have a dinner party!
Adorable green bird salt and peppers AND, guess what? They’re going to be my next give-away! Surprise! It’ll be in the next post! (Are you dyin’? 🙂) The bottoms twist off!
Gold-trimmed acorn plates make cake and ice cream positively elegant!
Some of you probably recognize this cup; it’s part of a tea set I designed for Lenox. They’re not being made anymore, which seems to be the same thing you can say about EVERYTHING these days! One of the fall-outs from the economy, at least as far as I’m concerned, are all the fun products that were requested and designed, but never got made. Especially dishes! ♥
I designed tons of things for the wonderful 250+ year-old China maker, Wedgwood that, unfortunately, have never seen the light of day, until today!! Back around 2002, Wedgwood asked for a complete collection of everything! Sugars, creamers, cake plates, butter dishes, dinner plates, mugs, tea pots, vases, jars, dresser trays, ice cream bowls, baby dishes, hanging plaques, glasses and accessories too, and pitchers . . . I love dishes so much, this was a dream job!!!
I drew and painted lots of ideas; here’s an earthenware milk pitcher and a hand-painted glass lemonade pitcher with a bird on the lid!
It’s so fun I can show them to you now — thank you again internet! The economy started changing around the time I was painting these and, unfortunately, Wedgwood never made them (heart breaker — but I worked with really nice people at Wedgwood–it wasn’t their fault, just a sign of the times!). I designed clear-glass formal candlesticks, and these green casual candlesticks. Everything was measured, many things had back, side and top views; this candlestick came with my removable crystal bird bobêche. I wanted everything to feel a little bit vintage and have wonderful details.
I designed lots of glasses, all kinds: etched, hand-painted with little flowers, cut and colored; and I named them; this champagne glass was “Sabrina.” You have to use your imagination to hear the clear bell ring they make when you click them together — to see the sparkle they would have made when held up to the light! My ice tea glass was thin, tall, etched, and green; I called it “Katherine” — there was also “Ingrid,” and “Audrey.” I named them after old movies and movie stars.
This is a whistling tea cup. When it’s filled with liquid, you can blow the bird whistle; it gurgles and sounds like chirping.
Of course, I had to have a red-lidded jar! I had a whole line of these jars in all sizes, for cookies and sugar — the tall one for pasta had a red-striped lid.
I used lots of words; for example, I designed a set of eight cups, each one was a different shape and size, and each had different quote on them; I called them “conversation cups” because I thought they would get people talking around the table.
I guess I should stop! I could do this all day, but you get the idea! It was a very fun job, and now that I can finally show them to you, it was all worth it! We can pretend! But onward and upward, it’s another day! And my kitchen still smells like cake-baking!
Didn’t I say something about cake? Yes, I did! But I think I’ll give you the recipe for this absolutely delicious Milk Cake in the next post! (See that cake-edge? I could go around the pan and cut off the edge and eat it first, it’s so good! And the middle melts in your mouth!). Plus, on the next post, we’ll take comments for the drawing for those green bird salt and pepper shakers; the perfect way to start thinking “spring” — and why not? And remember, we’re all going to New York the end of the month, so stick with me! ♥ (P.S. If you liked the music today, it’s from the Movie Midnight in Paris, which, if you haven’t seen it, I think you would love!) Byeeeee! ♥
Here I am with my first two best friends in life — that’s me, second from the right, the one with bows on her braids; the blond girl next to me is Cynthia Wrightman who lived across the street, and next to her is Melody Gelinas from four houses down. We were in the backyard of our house on Park Avenue, in Long Beach, California, with two of my brothers, the one we called “butterball,” Chuckie, on the right, and Stephen (the genius) on the far left, and a bunch of their friends. My mom had been having fun, body painting the neighborhood with watercolors.
There are simple basic necessities of life, things we just can’t live without: food, water, shelter, clothing . . . (I was asking Joe this morning, “what are the basic necessities of life?” He said, “Food, shelter . . .” I could hear him thinking, his eyes twinkled, . . . “gin” :-)) . . . and one of my basic necessities is best girlfriends.
When I moved to Martha’s Vineyard from California all those years ago, I didn’t really stop to think what I was leaving behind. I was so busy escaping, I forgot that I was going to a place where I had NO BEST FRIENDS. In fact, no friends at all. It’s so easy to make friends when you’re a child, easy to do when you’re in school, but as you get older, it becomes more difficult, especially if you work at home, aren’t married, and don’t have children. By the time I figured this out, it was too late, I had already moved! But even though I had left California, there was no way I was going to disconnect from my girlfriends!! I considered my phone bill for long distance calls to Diana, Elaine, Sarah, and Janet, to be just part of the “cost of living,” one of life’s necessities no matter how much it cost, like tea, or chocolate. They were my lifeline.
I didn’t know how to find kindred spirits when I first came to the island. It had always been so easy before. But now I was alone, without any connections. It was only several years later, after I was finally rescued by my darling BFF Margot, and welcomed back to the heavenly supportive world of tea-party-having, garden-admiring, tear-drying, wallpaper-shopping, soup-delivering, yard-sale-hopping, girl-party-having, shoe-admiring, old-movie-watching, lunch-dating, farmer’s market-going, road-trip-taking, TGIF-ing girlfriends, that I realized that I might have assimilated much sooner if I would have joined something, a quilting or knitting class, volunteered for something; if I’d worked with like-minded people, shoulder-to-shoulder, on a project so that friendship had a chance to grow organically. But I was shy and all alone and I didn’t know that.
Ask me if I had fun painting this! Yes I did! OK girlfriends, that’s all, have a wonderful day!! And thank you for being my friends. 
