Spode Love

"I have a little blue plate with a crinkled edge that old Mr. Bullis of East River gave me after his wife died. John likes an apple in the evening and I always put it on that blue plate. I have a feeling of richness every time I use it. It makes us part of so many lives--using these things."
                  From No Trumpet Before Him by Nelia Gardner White

I only have one piece of china from my mother's early years of housekeeping as she had no heirloom bits and pieces handed down through her family. It is a Fiesta teapot in a rose color, and its lid is not Fiesta but a marriage of blue. Mama might not have inherited sets of china or family silver but over the decades she did develop "dish love." She passed this love down to her four daughters. I know I have inherited an especially bad case of dish love, and I suspect many of you out there have it too. I admire the table settings in blogs daily, drool over them, have tried to learn from then but am a nervous wreck about showing my own attempt.

The china pattern below is not especially designed for autumn tables but more for spring and summer:

R.H. and I chose the Copeland-Spode Blue Bird for our wedding china, and a Fostoria pattern for our crystal that I have forgotten the name of (and we rarely use it now as the edge is so thin, instead using a sturdier pattern).

Our wedding silver is Wallace's La Reine.

Over the years we have added other lovely patterns of Spode, some of which we don't even know the name. But the Blue Bird remains my favorite and I keep it handy in a glass-fronted kitchen to enjoy often. Here is how I use it for a more casual setting for spaghetti night:

With all of the lovely blogs devoted to tablescaping, many of them often featuring Spode, this next bit of information may be a shocker.

We have one daughter and three daughters-in-law and only one of them has the least bit of interest in inheriting our Spode china!

That boggles the mind of this Spode Lover even when I understand that young women have different tastes than I do, taste that doesn't include Spode. Our oldest son's wife is the only one who likes my Spode china so I gave her my pieces of Spode's Billingsley Rose a couple of Christmases ago. Six plates in mint condition that we bought decades ago and a couple of ones I bought on eBay recently that turned out to be faded. (Please don't put your Spode through the dishwasher!) I also gave her the set of butter pats in Billingsley Rose, quite old and cute as can be. I was tempted to hold onto them but overcame that stingy notion. She collects pink willow ware  and had always admired my Billingsley  Rose so I knew the Spode would mix wonderfully with them.

Below shows how I used the Billingsley Rose for one of three tables at one daughter-in-law's bridesmaids luncheon here at Valley View.

  
But our Blue Bird? Several years ago I asked our son Defee to promise that he would keep our wedding china for a possible future granddaughter when we were no longer here. I know that as soon as that happens all our Spode will go on the auction block and I won't be able to do a blasted thing about it, will I?

He agreed to save it for a granddaughter although the hope of one seemed slim at the time as we had four amazing grandsons, all of them grown up. Then last Thanksgiving Day,  R.H. and I received a phone call--our youngest son and his wife were expecting their first child! The best Thanksgiving Day gift ever!

A couple of months later we had a florist delivery.

The beautiful arrangement was surprise enough, but when we opened the card to see who it could be from we received an even greater surprise. It was from Defee and Wallace and the card read:

           "It's a Girl!"

Think of that! I wonder if our sweet granddaughter will someday fall in love with Mimi's Copeland-Spode Blue Bird? Will she succumb to dish love?