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Vintage Feature – New Inventory Page Going Up

Southern Vintage Table Vintage China Rental NC I’ve been musing, thinking, problem-solving, photographing, counting, editing, and thinking some more all week. The problem? How to cleanly and efficiently share our inventory counts with our clients. Even though we have many lovely photographs on our website and on Pinterest, a more detailed description was still needed so clients could know more precisely what vintage treasures we offer. The solution had eluded me until I started mucking around in WordPress and its accompanying widgets.

Then, a most wonderful thing happened…

I discovered how to make a simple slideshow that can exhibit more than one image on the screen with individual descriptions. Ta dah! Now, please appreciate that this did take a bit of trial and lots of errors, but admittedly, I am pleased with myself. 🙂

I figured out pretty quickly that each photo needed to be standardized as far as size and look. Gulp. This meant that many, if not most, of our photos would have to be re-edited at the very least and probably a lot more would need to be retaken. The magnitude of this task took a while for me to accept, but with a long, deep breath, I resolutely began with the recently-published-but now-defunct Vintage Glassware Inventory page.

After revising this slideshow and fine-tuning the settings, our teapot collection was next in line. I pulled each off the shelves, matched them with their lids stored in a separate container, organized them on the table to get an idea on how to order them in the slideshow, created a backdrop, and then photographed each one. After measuring the capacity of several pots, and deciding on how much a teacup would hold, I also had a serving estimate for each.

With the more tedious part done, I created the slideshow with the new photos and added it to a new Inventory page along with the new glassware slideshow. Check it out – the page is called Inventory and now housed on our main menu. Whoop whoop! But this is just the beginning!

Southern Vintage Table Vintage China Rental NC — Large Decor Inventory coming soon!

The upcoming set of inventory will be our Large Decor Collection. I’ve got a good start and hope to add this slide show sometime soon. What’s after this? Still pondering that one – there are so many to choose from! 🙂 🙁

In the meantime, I’m also getting ready for a retirement tea party this week and two weddings the following weekend. Lots to do and enjoying every bit of it!

Thanks for visiting and have a terrific week! Looks like the sun will be coming back to NC mid-week – thank goodness!

(For those who are interested, I will share two secrets about taking photos. The first secret is that I use my iPhone6 camera. The technique for taking this kind of photo is a bit tricky but not rocket science. After taking the image, I first use the iPhoto app on the phone to straighten and crop the image. The second big secret is that I edit the image with an app I just love – Camera360. It’s free and amazing! (Thanks, Cat, for sharing this with me.) These photos are magically uploaded to iCloud and I then open them on my computer in iPhoto, name them and make a few minor adjustments, and export to a folder on iCloud. The final step is to import them into the WordPress library. None of this is difficult but it does take time and lots of it.)

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Southern Vintage Table Event – Before the Guests Arrive…

The venue was wonderfully historic and rustic, the decor details created by the bride and family were perfect, and we were very pleased to be a part of this wonderful day! After months of designing and planning, the Boondocks was ready for the celebration of Jennifer & Jesse’s wedding. Here are some of our photos – and it was so hard to pick out just a few – of the pre-celebration. As you can see, it was going to be a beautiful, sweet affair!

Congratulations, Jennifer & Jesse, and wishing you enduring love, happiness, and fun!

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Vintage Feature – Our Vintage Glassware Collection

Southern Vintage Table Vintage China Rental NC An exciting trend at Southern Vintage Table is an appreciation for our vintage glassware, and especially our colored goblet collection. Our assorted vintage mix has traveled to many venues this past year, delighting guests with their variety, color, and beauty.

Southern Vintage Table Vintage China Rental NC

As our collection has grown, we recently tallied up our goblets and tumblers. With today’s post we are sharing our numbers on our updated Vintage Drinkware page which includes our vintage goblets, teacups, punch cups, pitchers, and more!

PS – Check out an older post about our glassware, The Feel of Vintage Glassware and our Pinterest Board, Sparkling Vintage Glassware.

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Southern Vintage Table Event – A Photo Gift from Five Copper Creative!

What a wonderful surprise! Amanda from Five Copper Creative graciously shared her photos of our vintage china and glassware from Travis & Chasity’s wedding with us and, of course, we want to share them with you. Elegant, rustic, and romantic – a fabulous combination for a beautiful day! f

2015

Thank you, Five Copper Creative, for these lovely photographs!

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Vintage Feature – Revisiting Our Vintage Silver Plate Collection

It’s time to showcase the additions to our vintage silver plate collection! In a previous post, “From Elegant to Rustic, Vintage Silver Plate is Chic,” we introduced our silver treasury but since then we have added so much more. Today’s pictorial post features these shiny, timeless, and versatile lovelies – please enjoy!

At present here is our silver collection inventory.
Large & Medium Trays – 20+
Small Trays – 8+
Sugar & Creamers – 20+
Cake Stand – 1
Coffee/Tea Pots – 3 (+one lidless that is a beautiful vase!)
Pitchers – 7
Bowls & Serving Dishes – 8+
Ice Bucket – 1 large with handles (champagne), 1 large tub (4-5 wine bottles), 1 small (1 wine bottle)
Candle Holders – 20+
Bouquet Bowl Candelabra (3 Candle Holders) – 3
Bud Vases – 6+
Goblets – 6
Silver & Glass Coasters – 20+
Flatware Place Settings (Knife, Dinner Fork, Salad/Dessert Fork, Spoon) – 150+

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Vintage Tip – Cleaning Stains from Vintage China Part 2

Southern Vintage Table Vintage China Rental NC
It works – it really does! Regular household hydrogen peroxide is terrific for cleaning stained china! I’ve used this cleaning trick many times now and it has worked almost every time. All you need is regular hydrogen peroxide, soaking time, and a warm oven. It’s pretty remarkable and very easy.

I had a chance to give it another try with a set of salad plates gifted to me from my dear friend, Cissy. I immediately loved this vintage Homer Laughlin pattern with the edging and gold florals. Although the exact pattern name is unknown, the mark says “Homer Laughlin Colonial.” These stained, slightly crazed pieces needed a little time and effort and I knew just what to do.

With a tray underneath to catch spillage, I poured the H2O2 onto the first plate and filled it almost to the edge. Then I carefully placed the second plate on top, filled it, and continued until all the plates were soaking. After soaking for two days, I poured off the H2O2 and put them in a cold oven. With the temperature set to 200 degrees, the plates baked for about an hour. What happens in the oven is the heat evaporates the H2O2 that has seeped into the china pores, bringing the stains up to the surface.

Here are the incredible results – before soaking, after being in a warm oven, and then cleaned.

Cleaning China with Hydrogen Peroxide

So, give it a try with any stained china you might have or find. It’s definitely worth the effort! Check out my previous cleaning post for some more incredible before-and-afters! One thing I have learned since that post is you don’t need to use anything stronger than the standard concentration of H2O2. It just takes a little more time and may take a couple of soakings, but it works just as well and much cheaper, too. Voila!

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Southern Vintage Table Event – A Perfect July Day for Chasity & Travis

It was a beautiful Merry Hill Farm wedding and the late July weather was picture-perfect. After months of planning, new careers, and a relocation to the NC coast, Chasity and Travis were so excited their day had arrived!

This beautiful affair was more than their wedding day – it was time to rejoice with family and friends. From grandmother Jean’s stunning centerpieces and floral arrangements, to the decorating talents of the couple’s mothers and aunts, these two families made certain Chasity and Travis’ celebration was filled with memories to cherish for years to come.

The gorgeous purples of the centerpieces against burlap created a splendid backdrop for our vintage tableware and we loved the napkin/silverware lace burlap pockets with their floral accent! It was all so lovely and befitting of this couple’s love and devotion.

Thank you, Chasity and Travis, for inviting us to help with this beautiful affair! Wishing you love, happiness, and joy on your new life’s adventure together!

Here are the fantastic folks who helped make this a beautiful, joyful day!

Venue – Merry Hill Farm
Photographer – Five Copper Creative
Florist – Mews Designs
Floral Designer – Grandmother Jean
Decorators – Aunts April, Paula, Mary, Ruth
Director – Aunt Bonnie
Table Settings – Southern Vintage Table
Caterer – Clyde Coopers BBQ
Tents, Tables, Chairs – Hayden Tent Rentals
DJ – Big Boy Productions
Bar Tender – Raleigh Bartending School

PS – Chasity, thank you for being such a delight and for helping me with this post. Travis and your mother, I am so appreciative of your help unloading and loading. Lastly, Joni from Merry Hill Farm, you did an extraordinary job packing up from the evening’s festivities!

Also, sincere thanks to Amanda of Five Copper Creative for allowing us to feature several of her photos with ours. Be sure to check out her post for more photos of the family and celebration! Such a pleasure meeting you all!

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Southern Vintage Table Event – Anna & Anthony’s Wedding, The Sequel

They’re in – Kait Miller‘s beautiful photographs of a most happy event – the marriage of Anna and Anthony. In an earlier blog post we shared our images of the tables and decor along with one lone but wonderful photo of this radiant couple. Today’s post captures more of the joyfulness of this day, along with a few more lovely photos of our tables, courtesy of Kait!

There were two touching details you’ll love hearing about as much as we did – the stories about Anna’s dress and the tiered wedding cake. Take note of Anna’s mother’s elegant wedding dress in the below photo. After being refashioned and refitted, this dress was transformed into Anna’s one-of-a-kind heirloom wedding dress. How delightfully fabulous and sweet!

Now, here’s the backstory of their delicious wedding cake as told by Anna’s mother, Sheila.

“I baked the cake with my sister-in-law, Suzi. I had baked my own wedding cake with the help with my mother-in-law 37 years ago. Suzi had baked her own cake for her wedding 34 years ago. My mother-in-law was Susie’s mother but by that time Suzi didn’t need any help from her mother. Over the past 30 years Suzi has baked about 13 wedding cakes. I really couldn’t of done it without her. It was an almond flavored golden cake with lemon curd filling and Cointreau flavored buttercream.”

Magical memories, embellished with enduring family traditions, were created on this loved-filled wedding day. Anna and Anthony, wishing you two a lifetime of joy, happiness, and fun!

We are so pleased to have played a role in this most important family celebration and, as you can see below, Sheila was appreciative to have us there, too. Thank you, Sheila, for these kind words!

The vintage china and your decorating absolutely made the wedding so special. Having the wedding away from the family home created some challenges. We wanted our guests to feel the personal touches that we would have shared with them if we had been at home. You made it possible. I think the wedding was one of the happiest days of my life if not THE happiest. I know it was the happiest day of Anna’s life… Thank you so very much for your aesthetic touches and thoughtfulness.

Here are the fantastic vendors who helped make this a beautiful, happy day!

Venue – Merry Hill Farm
Photographer – Kait Miller Photography
Wedding Coordinator – Events by Memory Lane
Florist – Fernrock Farm
Tableware and Decor – Southern Vintage Table
Caterer – Thrills from the Grill
Hair and Makeup – Adonia by Jen and Samantha Anderson
Band – The Troupers
Transportation – Greenway Transit

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Vintage Feature – Meet Clarice Cliff from Staffordshire

It’s always a sweet pleasure to find something with a rich backstory and, indeed, one unfolded when I found this vintage tiered stand at a local thrift store. The striking red and white scenic pattern caught my eye as I glanced down the filled shelves. My heart skipped a beat as I picked it up. No cracks or chips – what a nice surprise! I looked for the mark underneath and read a name I’ve never heard before – Clarice.

With the slight crazing visible from the bottom and the unique mark, I knew I found something with an interesting tale – and, as it turns out, it’s the history of an incredibly creative English designer, Clarice Cliff, who made her mark in the pottery world during the Art Deco era of the 1920s-1930s. As I admired the beautiful scene on this pattern, I expected to discover more delicate creations of Clarice’s but her more popular pieces are much more interesting!

According to Wikipedia, Clarice was born in 1899 in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent, the heart of England’s pottery industry. She started working as a potter at age 13 and by age 25, Clarice was creating a new line of pottery known as Bizarre Ware with bright, striking colors and unique lines.

During the late 1920s and through the thirties, Clarice enjoyed much success and produced many different bright, colorful, and angular patterns, now highly collectible Art Deco pieces, including Honolulu and Melon. Production took a turn with onset of WWII, and English potteries were allowed to produce only white tableware. Following the war, the market returned to the traditional English patterns, which is when Tonquin was manufactured for the overseas market, including the United States.

After the war, although Cliff was occasionally nostalgic for the ‘Bizarre’ years, as witnessed in personal letters to friends, she seemed to be realistic and accepted the commercial taste was for conservative ware. Clarice seemed to enjoy playing a lesser role at the factory, knowing that she could not recapture those crazy days of the thirties.^[20] Much of the post-war production went to Australia, New Zealand or North America, where the taste was for formal ware in traditional English designs such as Tonquin^[21] rather than the striking patterns and shapes that had established Cliff’s reputation; thus she was never to return to creative work. – Wikipedia

From bizarre to bucolic, Clarice Cliff demonstrated an incredible range of talent during her lifetime, and although she was marginally recognized for her creative genius at the time, today she stands as a major artist of her time. To learn more about her life and work, check out the following sites. And, if you see a “bizarre” piece of pottery on the shelf, look underneath for her name – if it’s there, that would truly be a find!

Learn more about the amazing Clarice Cliff!
Wikipedia – Clarice Cliff
Inside Out – Clarice Cliff
Clarice Cliff
Clarice Cliff Facebook

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Vintage Feature – It’s Time for a Brief Blogging Break!

Southern Vintage Table Vintage China Rental NC Happy 4th of July!

It’s time for Southern Vintage Table to take a blogging vacay! We are celebrating Independence Day with a hiatus from our weekly post to concentrate on a few projects, both business and personal. We will be back Sunday, August 2nd. In the meantime, expect a few more Facebook posts during the weeks featuring some of our new old treasures! Have a terrific July!

(Pssst – Did you notice those patriotic red, white, & blue vintage goblets? Pretty awesome, huh?)

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