Excitement is in the air for all the newly engaged couples and we are feeling it here at Southern Vintage Table. The upcoming weeks will be filled with planning the details of your wedding day and we’d love to help!
We are currently booking our vintage collections for 2016 and believe our new FAQ page (under the “More” menu item) will help with questions and details about our rental process. We look forward to hearing from you. Congratulations!
It was the perfect day for our annual Bass Family Reunion! This wonderful tradition began in the mid-60s by Wiley and Susie Mae’s children – Christine, Aline, Weldon, and Wiley Jr – as a time set aside each Thanksgiving for the extended Bass family to share a meal and reconnect. Every year since, we have continued this tradition, and although many dear family members are no longer with us, we remember and honor them by being together.
For this year’s gathering, Southern Vintage Table set the tables with our vintage blue & white china patterns and amber glassware collection. Our mix of creamy-white table linens were covered with burlap runners and adorned with petite arrangements of greenery, votives, and pumpkins. Large bouquets, created by Rowena, were placed at the entrance table and on the food tables. (Many thanks to the setup crew – Sandy, Amanda, Travis, Allie, and Rowena!)
With the 60+ family members and friends bringing their favorite dishes for the buffet line, we enjoyed an incredible feast. (Just for the record, some of those dishes are assigned to certain chefs in the family because, we all know, they make the BEST … turkey & dressing, baked ham, mashed potatoes, collards, sweet potato casserole, chicken-n-dumplings, deviled eggs, chocolate eclair cake, coconut cake, carrot cake, and many more …)
For the newcomers, we loved seeing you and hope you’ll come again. To the folks who were not able to make it, we missed you and hope to see you Thanksgiving 2016! As shared in our previous post from Thanksgiving 2013, “once again, the Bass Family came together on Thanksgiving. We hugged, we feasted, and we parted, feeling content and connected.”
PS – We must remember to get a group photo next year! Now, who will be in charge? (Insert smiley/winky face here…)
We have a new infatuation – vintage girl flower vases and planters. With their simple lines and faces, the six in our collection are oddly adorable. They have this quaint vintage look that we love!
The only vase with any identification is the one below. She was made in Czechoslovakia and her story is very interesting! Here’s an excerpt from Kovels regarding her mark, Erphilia.
Erphila is a mark found on Czechoslovakian and other pottery and porcelain made after 1920. This mark was used on items imported by Ebeling & Reuss of Philadelphia, a giftware firm that was founded in 1866 and out of business sometime after 2002. The mark is a combination of the letters E and R (Ebeling & Reuss) and the first letters of the city, Phila(delphia). Erphila is one of many marks used by American importers. Many whimsical figural pitchers and creamers, figurines, platters, and other giftwares carry this mark.
The rest do not have any identifying marks and after hours of researching, their origins remain a mystery. With the exception of the one from Czechoslovakia, our educated guess is that the others were made during the 1940s-60s, probably in the USA. There were many pottery and china companies during that time in America, many of which are no longer operational. We did pick up a few names of companies that made figurines and planters – NAPCO, Royal Copley, Treasure Craft, Shawnee Pottery, Hull – but we really have no clue as to who made these specific cutie-pies.
These mysterious lovelies, as well as our other vintage vases, are available for your guests to also adore!
PS – Still updating and revising our inventory pages – newly added is our Vintage Suitcases & Such. Here’s your invitation to take a look!
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
Very, very brief post today – we’ll let the uploaded slideshows take center stage but with one short explanation. One page with all the inventory slideshows just wasn’t going to work so we made an adjustment. Take a look at our Inventory menu tab – we are making progress and more adjustments are pretty likely!
We’re almost ready for our Friday wedding deliveries to our two couples. Calli & Nathan are setting their tables with our blue & white dishes (yep, we have 80 in our inventory) and using marsala and amber accents – can’t wait to see photos! Allie & Steven’s farm wedding will feature our rustic decor – and we get to set up their cupcake station!
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!
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.)
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!
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!
Excitement is in the air for all the newly engaged couples and we are feeling it here at Southern Vintage Table. The upcoming weeks will be filled with planning the details of your wedding day and we’d love to help!
Very, very brief post today – we’ll let the uploaded slideshows take center stage but with one short explanation. One page with all the inventory slideshows just wasn’t going to work so we made an adjustment. Take a look at our Inventory menu tab – we are making progress and more adjustments are pretty likely!
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.
An exciting trend at 
