Today’s post is short and sweet but it’s been a productive week.
Check out our two additions under the Inventory tab – Vintage Silver-Plate Inventory and Vintage Vases Inventory. We are also revising and adding to our previously published inventory pages – for example, we added four charming teapots and our love for yellow is certainly showing up!
We are busy, busy, busy as we continue to showcase our wonderful vintage collections for you!
Here’s our goal for the week ahead and our wish for yours – “… blur the line between work and play.”Arnold J. Toynbee
Each week we wait, calmly and confidently, for an inspiration for our Sunday post. Sometimes it comes easily because we have lovely photos from a recent event or we’ve been adding new features to our website. Other times it’s a cool vintage treasure we think folks will love to see. But, this time, our inspiration was special – we believe it was a message from the cosmos!
Earlier this week, as a couple of ideas were stewing in my head, I received an email from Wedding Wire that we had a terrific new review from a client – we were thrilled! Two days later we hear from the caterer who hired us to help with a surprise retirement tea party – the client loved our china! Then, as the saying goes, “good things come in threes,” the next day we receive notification of a comment on a blog post from the bride’s mother with a thoughtful note about our services. Dang! Three wonderful compliments in less than a week – indeed, a cosmic signal to share these gracious sentiments!
So, gosh & golly, here are the kind words from recent clients that pleased us oh-so much!
~ Wedding Wire review
“She was wonderful to work with and her products were beautiful. Probably the best money spent for the wedding! She always responded within 24 hours of an email (often within a few hours). Highly recommend.”
~ Comment shared by caterer about a surprise retirement tea party
“Everything went great and looked beautiful! She was so surprised and absolutely LOVED all the china that we had!”
~ Blog post comment
“It was a perfect combination of country vintage. Thanks to Southern Vintage Table for the beautiful vintage china, glasses and silverware. It was very impressive and received lots of compliments… What a sight it was. Everyone together made the Bride’s vision come true. Thank you so much-Mother of the BRIDE”
“…it is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.”– David Steindl-Rast
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!
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.
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!
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
Update! Crazed plates are usually not suitable for food but stained plates without the crazing should be fine. We are removing crazed plates from our inventory.
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.
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!
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.
Photo by Five Copper Creative
Photos by Five Copper Creative
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!
Photo by Copper Five Creative
Here are the fantastic folks who helped make this a beautiful, joyful day!
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!
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!
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.
Courtesy of Wikipedia
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!
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?)
An exciting trend at 
Happy 4th of July!