Stacks of vintage china place settings are ready to set the table!
It was her turn to host the monthly wine club dinner and Rowena wanted to do something special for her friends. The wine club’s mission is to ferret out the best wines in every possible category. For each meeting the members contribute a dish for the meal and then they try different vintages of the featured wine. A difficult task but these dedicated women are up for it!
This month’s featured wine was Reislings and what would make this festive event even more fun? An assortment of vintage china! Rowena arranged for Southern Vintage Table to set her table and each guest enjoyed a lovely unique place setting from our elegant collection with themes of pink and green. The final “plat de résistance” to help uncover the best Reisling vintage – an assortment of vintage hats!
The bold salad plate sets off the delicate flowers of the berry bowl and dinner plate.The soft greens and pinks of these vintage china patterns are exquisite.The greens in these vintage china patterns are highlighted by the striking pattern of the salad plate.A vintage china place setting with the vintage silverware – gorgeous!
Bottles of Reislings and a delicious meal on beautiful vintage china – the perfect recipe for a spirited time! Having a dinner party, book club meeting or wine tasting event? Contact Southern Vintage Table for unique vintage china place settings that will get the conversation started!
Friends and birthdays just go together. My friends, Cis, Louise, Jami, Pat and Mary, love to get together for any reason and birthdays just make our gathering even more fun. Jami invited us over for a home cooked meal, including her speciality dessert, and I had the pleasure of setting our table with china from the casual collection of Southern Vintage Table. With dinner, key lime cheesecake and vintage hats, you’ve got a YaYa palooza!
Vintage hats in a vintage suitcase provide a hit of the frivolity coming up. The pink cards are our official YaYa names!
Our food was delicious – chicken enchiladas, avocado and tomato salad, quinoa and rice – all served in and on pink vintage china in the casual collection!
After dinner, we donned our hats, made our birthday wishes to Cis and Mary and had scrumptious key lime cheesecake and coffee. Pass the vintage china, please…
The two tiered centerpiece complimented our floral vintage tea cups and dishes!Dessert coffee in gorgeous vintage tea cups
Consider Southern Vintage Table for your next birthday or special evening with friends and family. Add the vintage hats and welcoming suitcase for more vintage flavor!
This vintage china rental business is a perfect fit for me. I love vintage stuff – love the smell, the feel, the look, the beauty, the energy encapsulated in it, the history. I also love to go hunting for it – what a thrill when you find something interesting and imagine sharing it with others.
One day I was looking carefully at each piece I had placed in my shopping cart at a Durham thrift store and an attractive woman approached me. She commented about the array of dishes in my cart and I mentioned to her that I was looking for china for my vintage china rental business, Southern Vintage Table. We chatted a bit and she went back into the china aisle. A few more minutes later she returns with more pieces of the same pattern I had showed her. The kindness of strangers – don’t we all love that!
This is vintage china pattern I showed Terry in the thrift store. It’s Trent by Homer Laughlin.
The next time she came back to my cart she was holding a coffee cup with “Terry” on it. It turned out to be her name.
Now, here’s the beautiful, eerie part – as she’s showing this cup to me, she’s explaining that it must be a message from the cosmos to talk with me about Southern Vintage Table. She shared that she had worked as a consultant with some prominent local companies in the area, which certainly caught my attention, My cosmic antenna was also up that day and I deeply felt this was not just a chance encounter. We exchanged names and numbers.
Our fateful meeting turned into a wonderful business collaboration for which I am very grateful. Her insight, experience and expertise helped get my business up and ready. Thank you, Terry Melville, for understanding the message in the coffee cup!
Here’s Trent all dressed up with a vintage dessert plate and compote!
Southern Vintage Table is ready to help you with your next event – birthday, shower, anniversary, wedding reception, dinner party, tea party and any other gathering – with beautiful, interesting vintage china!
Last weekend I went thrift store shopping for Southern Vintage Table and came across two beautiful vintage doors. They were narrow and had three small windows in the upper half – just charming and I thought they would be perfect as a prop after painting and distressing. I was trying to decide if I should go with a light blue or an antique white when I thought – oh no, I wonder if they have lead paint on them. Suddenly, I was the one who was getting distressed because I knew they probably did.
I love these doors, but with the lead paint, I had to pass them on.
I stopped by the hardware store and picked up a lead paint test kit, hoping that it wouldn’t be. Got home, unloaded the doors, read the directions on the kit and tested them. Bam – the tester turned bright pink which meant they had lead paint. As I said, I was very distressed. After researching how to remove lead paint, I decided to call on an expert. Found out it would cost way more than I could afford for two prop doors. Oh, well…
I figured this was another valuable learning experience and posted them on Facebook. Within 30 minutes someone wanted them, even knowing they had lead paint. I was pleased because they needed to be saved and restored. Lesson learned – take a lead paint tester with me and check before I buy them!
Not all was lost on that shopping day. I did find two vintage china plates, a vintage berry bowl and a vintage table runner. Only one of each but that’s part of the fun of thrift store shopping!
Three thrift store finds – two vintage china plates, a vintage berry bowl and a vintage table runner!
These and other beautiful vintage china and accessories are available for rental at Southern Vintage Table!
As I have researched the vintage china patterns I have collected for Southern Vintage Table, I have also learned about the companies that designed them. Here are three wonderful vintage china patterns with variations of lovely pink flowers. The three patterns were produced near West Chester, West Virginia by three different pottery companies, none of which are in business today.
Rosebud Bouquet by Harker Pottery Company
I remember the first piece of Harker Pottery I found years ago when I was collecting plates to break for my mosaic projects. The pattern was teal green and had this rope design around the rim. I fell in love with it, and even though it had obvious defects, I could never bring myself to break it. Since then, I have collected more Harker pieces and still marvel at their story. Touted as the oldest pottery company in the United States, Harker Pottery started in a log cabin in 1840 in East Liverpool, Ohio. In the 1930s, it moved to Chester, West Virginia and remained in business until the early 1970s. This pattern, part of a series called Royal Gadroon, was popular during the 1940s-1950s.
Rosebud Bouquet by Harker
Green Arbor by Continental Kilns
This lovely hand painted pattern was one of the first pieces I found for my vintage china rental business, Southern Vintage Table. I love not only the raised design but also the pink and green color combination. Continental Kilns was based in West Virginia and operated during the 1940s through the late 1950s.
This vintage china pattern features hand painted flowers.
Appalachian Heirloom by Taylor, Smith & Taylor
I remember the day I found a set of this china pattern at the thrift store. They were dusty, dirty and priced to sell. When I brought them home and washed them, the stunning beauty of the pattern emerged. The company, Taylor, Smith & Taylor, existed from 1899 until the early 1980s in Chester, West Virginia. I couldn’t find the date of this pattern but I believe it’s from the 1950s.
The band of dark teal sets off the pink flowers of this vintage china pattern.
Three beautiful vintage china patterns, all produced in West Virginia by three different pottery companies, are part of our dinner table past. Pieces from each of these vintage patterns are available for your next gathering from Southern Vintage Table!
Here is a screen shot of Southern Vintage Table’s Pinterest Boards
One of the key web tools for sharing inventory of my vintage china and accessories is Pinterest. I love this site! It’s easy to import, or pin photos, and organize them onto boards. Plus, the presentation is professional and, with great appreciation, free!
When I first started using Pinterest, I uploaded photos from my website, Southern Vintage Table, and from my computer. I wasn’t thinking of the order of my uploads because I thought I could later reorganize them on my board. As I added more photos and looked back at the board, I realized there were large clusters of the same type of photo and I wanted to mix them up a bit. When I looked up how to do this, I discovered you can’t rearrange pins within a board.
At the bottom of my board there were five layered vintage china settings in a row. I wanted to move two of them to break up this cluster.
But, I found a semi-solution that helped break up the clusters. I chose a pin within the clusters and reassigned it to another board. (Click on the pencil/edit icon in the upper right of the photo. Next to the board field, scroll to find a board to temporarily pin the image.) Then I opened the new board with the moved pin at the top and re-reassigned it, pushing the pin to the top of the original board. With repinning to another board and then re-repinning to the original board, the end result is a better mix of photos and an overall more attractive board.
Now there are 3 layered vintage plates together here and at the top of the board.
Using this technique, you change the order of an entire board. Just start a new empty board and repin your photos from the original board in the order you want them to appear for your viewers. Remember to think backwards with the pin you want to be seen first being the last one you move.
(FYI – Pinterest lets you easily change the order of boards. Just click on the board and drag it to the new position. Hopefully, they’ll make it just as easy to move pins!)
These three floral vintage china patterns are lovely!
Okay, I’m revealing my age a bit, something that doesn’t bother me at all, but this 60s jingle has stuck with me for over 50 years! I was really into Barbie when I was young and I loved to change her outfits. “Mix and match, it’s fun to do, what Barbie wears is up to you…” spoke to me as a young girl of the 1960s.
Well, this jingle now goes perfectly with the table philosophy of Southern Vintage Table – love to mix and match patterns in every color, in any pattern from every decade. It’s like bringing together generations of families who sat at their dinner table throughout the century. Mix and match is still fun to do!
The vintage glass bowl gives you a peek of the rose in the china pattern underneath!Three charming vintage patterns look sweet!
All great change in America begins at the dinner table. – Ronald Reagan (www.brainyquote.com)
The perfect setting for great conversation with this beautiful blue vintage china patterns!
Southern Vintage Table is ready to help you plan for your upcoming events this fall. Have a wedding, anniversary, birthday party, baby shower or a dinner party coming up? Let us help you set the table and get the conversation started!
Check out our inventory of vintage china and accessories on Pinterest!
Molly from Moishi Moishi told me that her grandmother Myrna would say, “The higher the hat, the closer to heaven.” Well, I’ve got some heavenly thrift store cleaning tips for you!
When I first started my vintage china collection for Southern Vintage Table, I labored over removing the stickers, tape and permanent marker prices. I would peel, scape and soak every dish to get that mark off! Now, I use three products that make cleaning thrift store vintage china a breeze!
1. Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. This product is fantastic – it will quickly remove the permanent ink some thrift stores use for pricing and easily takes care of sticker glue and tape residue. It also does a terrific job of cleaning the bottoms of plates and other china so that when you are finished, the plate looks almost brand new! Do be gentle with some china patterns, especially if they have gold layering. I also use Mr. Clean Magic Eraser for other cleaning tasks. Today I cleaned the outside of two vintage suitcases and removed most of the scuff marks. They both look amazing all cleaned up and are now ready for my next event!
2. Eucalyptus Oil. This stuff will also remove sticky stuff on dishes. Sometimes the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser won’t get the mark off so I’ll dab some eucalyptus oil on a paper towel and wipe it off. It also smells nice and clean.
3. Very fIne sand paper. Some of the older china that’s crazed or china that’s unglazed on the bottom will soak in the permanent ink pricing. Using a very fine sand paper and lightly sanding can sometimes do the trick. Be gentle. I have also sanded down chips or sharp places on glass dishes and some china so that the imperfection is almost imperceivable.
These beautiful plates are clean and ready for your next event!
Hope these tips work for you. If you have any other hints or advice for cleaning thrift store finds, please share!
Clementine would be pleased that her Blue Willow teapots will be enjoyed by many admirers of her favorite china pattern.
What do The Andy Griffith Show, The Munsters and old Westerns have in common? Well, yes, they are all midcentury classic television but there’s something even cooler – they share a common dining table setting, the Blue Willow vintage china pattern. These famous shows set their table with this blue and white pattern because it is crisp, vintage and full of history. First designed in the 18th century, Blue Willow has been on generations of family dining tables and continues to be popular today. Read more about this fascinating pattern on Wikipedia.
As told in the Blue Willow legend, star-crossed lovers were transformed into doves after their tragic deaths. According to Wikipedia, these birds did not appear on the early willow patterns.
There’s something special about blue vintage china that many folks appreciate. Blue Willow features dark indigo against white that’s so striking. Blends of light blue vintage china are soothing and inviting. Vintage turquoise has a romantic flair while blues with greens, pinks and yellows present a cheery table.
Whether it’s the classic blue and white vintage china table setting, a myriad of blue vintage china stoneware patterns or a mingling of soft elegant blue vintage china patterns, your guests will love it. Check out more blue vintage china patterns available at Southern Vintage Table on our Pinterest Board!
