We were sorting boxes of future stock today. It’s amazing how many part sets and oddments we came across… cutlery, tea & coffee sets and lots of drinking glasses.

They’re mainly transfer printed tumblers for water, fruit juice, milk etc.

They date from the 1950s to the 1970s…

….and there are some fantastic designs amongst them – atomic influence, stylised figures, geometric patterns and flower power.

We’ll have to be patient to complete sets of the same design – although we also like the idea of putting some ‘mix & match’ sets together. The various shapes, colours & patterns look great together on a shelf.

Here are a few of the sets that have passed through the shop…

…and some that are currently for sale.

We’ve been concentrating on tumblers in this post – but as we’re talking glasses, we’ll just show you this beauty!

Having had a spate of broken wine glasses of late, we were very pleased to come across a few of these fantastic, futuristic 60s glasses recently – with a lovely bubble detail in the stem. They’re very fragile, but we’ll try to be more careful in future!!

We’re excited to announce that we’ve just added an Amazon a-store to the H is for Home website.

It’s full of books & magazines that we find inspirational, informative or both. We’ve divided them into sections such as Guides to vintage collecting, 1950s design, Pottery & ceramics and Interior & style magazines.

Link to H is for Home bookshop (UK)

Link to H is for Home bookshop (US)

Come & have a browse!

To mark the end of one year & the start of another, here’s a collection of some of our most popular photos we posted on Flickr in 2008.

Click on the links below to see them in more detail.

Happy 2009!

1. Recent purchases, 2. Vintage enamel teapot, 3. Vintage purple 1970s twin bell Westclox alarm clock, 4. 1950s biscuit tin (detail), 5. Vintage coffee pot collection, 6. Figgjo Flint ‘Daisy’ cup & saucer, 7. Vintage storage tins, 8. Vintage ‘Dolly Days’ coffee set, 9. Vintage painted serving tray, 10. Coffee for 2, 11. Still life in orange, 12. Vintage Denby Arabesque collection, 13. Hornsea mug collection, 14. Vintage Lundtofte stainless steel & rosewood coffee set, 15. Orange Felt Elephant, 16. Home Sweet Home, 17. Vintage dominoes, 18. Vintage pottery spoon rest, 19. This week’s haul, 20. Collection of vintage Staffordshire Pottery & Kiln Craft mugs, 21. On the line, 22. Cathrineholm ‘Lotus’ salt & pepper pots, 23. Collection of ‘cosy coaster’ mug cosies, 24. Vintage Cathrineholm enamel kettle, 25. Vintage hand crocheted bedspread, 26. vintage original silk screen print, 27. This weekend’s haul, 28. vintage pottery plate, 29. Glass Menagerie, 30. hand knitted ‘cosy coaster’, 31. Recent finds, 32. Vintage kitchen utensils, 33. Our vintage garden lounger, 34. Vintage Denby Pottery ‘Trees’ lidded soup bowl, 35. Collection of West German vases, 36. Picked up this week

Viners is renowned for its high quality stainless steel products.

The company was founded in 1901 by Adolf Viener.

Sheffield is the home of British steel manufacturing and Viners grew into the biggest cutlery factory in the city.

Ruben Viner, one of the founder’s sons, became the firms driving force, and it really prospered in the 1960s.

This period saw our favourite range of products with wonderful shapes & textures – by designers such as Gerald Benney and Stuart Devlin. Even the packaging looked great!!

Their cutlery ranges from this era such as Mosaic, Shape and Sable are now much sought after.

Mosaic

Shape

Sable

The stainless steel was sometimes combined with woods such as rosewood and teak…

…as in this fabulous ice bucket…

…or these Polynesian teaspoons.

The company invested in a modern factory in Sheffield with subsidiaries in Ireland, France and Australia. Unfortunately, this major investment was to be the firm’s undoing. Crippling loan repayments at a time of stiff competition from cheaper, Far Eastern imports saw the family-run business close in 1982.

The brand is now owned by US-based Oneida, the world’s largest cutlery company.

There are some great vintage pieces out there – have a look at H is for Home’s current Viners pieces.

We’re taking a look at vintage utensils this week – those useful, kitchen tools from the humble wooden spoon to the wonderfully named kitchemajig.

No kitchen should be without a wooden spoon  – preferably a few.

They come in a wide variety of sizes, have multiple uses, they don’t scratch pots & pans… and also develop a lovely character over years of use.

We keep ours in this lovely, old wooden rack…

… another potful next to the stove…

…and still more hanging from this ancient iron well hook.

It’s useful having them close at hand wherever we happen to be working in the kitchen. There’s always the perfect spoon for a particular job.

This one has such a wonderful patina that it’s now been retired from general use and sits happily on a shelf enjoying its life of leisure… with a pair of child’s antique wooden clogs for company!

Of course kitchen tools don’t stop with the wooden spoon… there are palette knives, ladles, forks, fish slices, whisks etc, etc, etc.

Some utensils are multi-functional like the aforementioned kitchemajig…

…others have very specific uses such as the tomato slicer, butter curler and pastry blender.

Do rolling pins count as utensils?

We think they probably do – made from wood, pottery, marble, or in the case of this Pyrex example, glass.

The heyday for utensils – well our favourite era at least – was the 1950s & 60s. Names such as Skyline, Prestige & Tala.

Chrome & stainless steel tools mounted on lovely painted wooden handles available in a rainbow of colours.

They’re a great way of adding a vintage touch to an otherwise contemporary kitchen. They look good in sets of the same colour…

…or mixed & matched.

We picked up this wonderful set recently – boxed and with its original hanging rack. One small problem though, someone was obviously in desperate need of the lipped, oval spoon… and removed it.

We’re now on a quest for a 50-year-old lipped spoon, in pristine condition, in the right colours – no easy task!

We’ve got boxes full of coffee services short of one cup, storage jars waiting for matching lids and cutlery sets missing the odd knife or teaspoon. It’s all a matter of keeping your eyes open and being patient.

We’re currently relishing reading through a huge pile of 1950s/60 Ideal Home magazines, they’re full of fantastic ads for furniture, fabrics and housewares, including the odd one for kitchen utensils…

…like these for Tala and Prestige.

By coincidence, just as we were writing this post, we sold this lovely Prestige set with their classic 1950s, diamond-patterned handles.

If you manage to find one that you love, a kitchen utensil is of those wonderful items that can give you a little bit of pleasure every time you use it – have you got a favourite?

We’re really excited – one of our saucepans has been featured in today’s Independent newspaper. Our first bit of national press coverage!!

By the way, ours is number 10!

And here we are on their website too…

Essential for seasoning… they need storing, sprinkling, pinching, grinding and shaking. There are endless possibilities to enable all these things.

Starting with the traditional matching salt & pepper pots… they’re made from pottery, glass, metal, plastic and wood.

As these pots are often left on permanent display, it’s a great opportunity for showing off a bit of good design, striking pattern or flash of colour. These gorgeous Cathrineholm examples manage to combine all three…

We also like pinch pots – they’re great for salt crystals or flakes – and coarse, ground pepper.

We keep these John Clappison-designed Hornsea pinch pots in our kitchen table. They were originally intended as ashtrays, but are the perfect size & shape for this alternative use.

Larger pinch pots & salt pigs are great for keeping beside the stove for everyday cooking use.

These wooden pinch pots are actually antique cheese moulds – again they’re ideal for their new function.

A salt pig is one of the best containers to keep by the cooker as it allows for a good scoop or handful when adding to boiling water for pasta, rice, vegetables etc.

If you prefer your salt in a sealed container there are lots of options here too!

And finally grinders… these make light work of salt crystals & whole peppercorns – releasing aromas and flavours right at the point of serving.

The undoubted master of the grinder is designer Jens Quistgaard, with his numerous examples produced for Dansk Designs. There is, in fact, a book available entirely dedicated to the subject – Danish Pepper: Jens Quistgaard’s Teak Pepper Mills (Amazon USA)

As you can see from the cover, their sculptural forms and beautiful grain makes for a stunning grouping. We’ve just decided that we may have to start a collection of our own!

Not too many words this week – well… it is all about numbers!

Plenty of images though – showing numbers being used as decoration, their representation in print and some objects in which numbers are an integral part.

This charming children’s book is a collection of number rhymes & finger games.

How many of these do you remember?

This mouse one’s a teensy bit sad – it ends with no little mice left!

All illustrations by Denis Wrigley taken from One Two Three Four first published in 1970.

We picked up these wooden printing blocks some years ago, and have a large tray of them mounted on a wall. They have a really sculptural quality and we love the way light & shadow fall across its surface.

We found this lovely pack of old playing cards in a mixed box auction lot the other day.

When you think of items that require numbers to function, clocks would be top of most people’s list. Here are some nice examples that H is for Home currently has in stock or has sold recently.

We love these early pocket calculators with their red or green displays. They seemed so space age at the time!

Not forgetting telephones – push button and dial versions.

And then there are numbers used as pure decoration. The main photo at the top is a 1960s fabric design. And there’s this Carltonware money box, again from the 60s. We love the ‘groovy’ treatment that numbers got during this decade.

Hope you enjoyed today’s blog – we don’t think it’s going to be too hard for you to guess what ‘O’ will be for next week!

We picked up this fabulous coffee set last weekend.

That made our minds up about what L should be for!

Danish company Lundtofte produced high quality, stainless steel pieces – predominantly kitchen & dining wares, but also some decorative household objects.

They used top quality materials and manufacturing techniques – stainless steel often combined with teak and rosewood.

There are some fantastic, mid-century modern designs to be found by designers such as Tias Eckhoff, Eric Herlow and Lone Sachs.

We have a few examples of Lundtofte for sale at the moment at H is for Home- have a look!

Additional image credits
modcats.com
Vintage retro
Modernity
Yahoo Japan (kealoha)

Amongst the items of fresh stock for next week we’ve got some lovely Cathrineholm pots & pans that we recently picked up.

This range of enamelware was designed by Grete Prytz Kittelsen in the 1950s.

Grete Prytz was born in Norway in 1917 to a famous, Oslo-based family of goldsmiths.

Between 1936 & 1941 she studied at the National College of Arts & Crafts. After graduating she went to work for the family firm designing jewellery and metalware.

Enamelling was a Norwegian speciality in the early years of the 20th century, a technique which Grete revived, drawing on the family’s expertise in this field. Characteristic of her designs were the abstract motifs and striking colours such as her Lotus range illustrated here.

There was an exhibition of her work at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design (Nasjonalmuseet for Kunst, Arkitektur og Design) in Oslo until the end of August 2008. There is also a book/catalogue to accompany the exhibition available here.

If you’re a collector or are interested in seeing more of this work have a look at the Lovers of Cathrineholm Designs Flickr group.