It’s a bit Fishy

Last week, we featured a wonderful set of vintage bull plates – this week we have some equally fantastic fish plates!

We bought five of the set in a single purchase and then managed to track down the missing plate in the following days.

It’s now a fabulous and complete set of six.

They’re highly stylised with beautiful detailing – dancing air bubbles, fluttering scales and swirling fins. We certainly haven’t seen anything similar in the local rivers or canals!

They’re from the Aquarius range produced by Washington Pottery in the 1960s. In 1970, Washington Pottery became English Ironstone Pottery Ltd. Three years later, it became English Ironstone Tableware Ltd, so you can trace the age of an item from its back stamp.

As with the bull plates, these colourful fish plates would look amazing displayed on a long shelf or mounted on a wall. Both types are listed in our web shop.

Load of old bull!

We thought that we must have written a post about this range of crockery before. Having looked through our blog archive, it’s had a few mentions, but never a dedicated post. Surely, it deserves one!

This set was featured in yesterday’s Forthcoming Attractions post – and as we commented on there, we love this eccentric, crazy pattern.

Psychedelic, multi-coloured, stylised bulls – what’s not to like?

Some of them just about manage a passable bull hide look, but then this guy just goes completely wild with his pink & turquoise daisy splodges. Fabulous!

As you can see from the base marks, the range is called “Beefeater” and was produced by English Ironstone Pottery Ltd. They date from the early 1970s era. In addition to these oval main course plates, we’ve also come across side plates – and there’s also a more monochrome version of the pattern. They display really well and look great on a long shelf or mounted on a wall.

Stockholm cake stand

We’ve chosen this gorgeous cake stand as the week’s favourite item.

It’s got a lovely wintery feel so a bit of a shame we didn’t have it available for Christmas week, but as it’s twelfth night today, we’ve just squeezed it into the festive period.

It’s very Nordic/Scandi – in fact the pattern is called Stockholm… and was produced by Crown Devon/Fieldings in the 1950s. Sometimes you come across ‘copies’ which are simply two dinner plates with holes drilled into them and a modern central column added; but this is an original piece with the distinctive, and rather stylish, carry handle.

It’s perfect for mince pies at Christmas if you want to put it away for a while – or cakes & biscuits at any time of year! Coming to the shop website very soon.

West German vase collection

We’ve been Fat Lava fans for a long time. It was over 7 years ago that we first blogged about our West German vase collection. All the fabulous shapes and glazes make them a wonderful thing to collect. There’s much more information coming to light about the various factories and designers that produced them which adds further interest and insight. Books, websites and magazine articles dedicated to the subject have appeared over recent years.

We’ve seen quite an addition in our own numbers recently. As mentioned in Tuesday’s post, we bought 21 vases at auction last week.

There are some real beauties, including pieces by Dumler & Breiden, Carstens and Sheurich.

Some work well in small groupings…

…others are very impressive stand-alone pieces, such as this large, sculptural Carstens Luxus range ‘Beehive’ vase designed by Dieter Peter.

As well as adding a couple to our own West German vase collection, we’ve put about fifteen of them into our antiques centre space; they work very well in a large display. We’ll also add some to the website in the coming week – here’s what we currently have for sale in our online shop.

H is for Home Harbinger

Category: pottery

It’s a bit Fishy

Load of old bull!

Stockholm cake stand

West German vase collection