Herban Sprawl

This one is dedicated to La Mia Sorella del Piatto: Maffa.

It was six in the morning when Maffa and I rolled out, had our coffee and Harris Teeter banana muffins and took off for Dish Mecca. We arrived at around 8:30 or so, and the place was already crowded, and there were already cars leaving!

We took the handy two-wheeler that converts to a four-wheeler, hopped on the back of a golf cart and were shuttled to the Cathedral of China. There, in the paved parking lot, were rows and rows of cracked, chipped, broken and rejected pieces of china. We each paid $5 to enter, and $5 for a regulation box and that was the end of money changing hands – at least for the time being!

Maffa is a very, very thorough type. She combs through carefully, thinking of all the people she knows who would like this or that to add to their collections. I paint in broad strokes. I cruise the boxes, looking for signs of possible treasures in the dozen or so patterns that live at my house or my sister’s, or for those who sent me on a mission. You can develop a sense of what might be in a box, but not always.

It’s impossible to describe the hoards of people, the occasional sound of a box of china hitting the pavement, or the sense of wonder at so many patterns. As I have written in this space before, I am a dish freak – I never met a piece of Spode I couldn’t love. But even with my encyclopedic visual memory of patterns, the place never fails to simply astonish me. This year seemed heavy on rejects of those department store sets that became so popular several years back. None were open stock, so if you broke something, you were out of luck. My mother always advised “open stock – that’s the way to go.” Even so, dish patterns go extinct, and that’s what’s made a millionaire out of Bob Page!

We worked our way through the place, which got to be tough going. Between us, Maffa and I have one decent working body. We were getting achy, but we persevered and when her box was overflowing, she sat down and spread it all out to decide what to keep and what to dump. I took a picture. She was not happy. It was too good to pass up.

When we gave up on that part of it, we trudged back to the car, loaded the two heavy boxes and the two-wheeler and went back for lunch and more fun at the sidewalk sale. The thing about the yard sale is that the Replacements people are kind to the other local non-profits and let them set up the food concessions, as well as donating a percentage of their profit on the sale to those entities. It’s win-win for them. They unload their damaged wares, create a circus atmosphere, and it becomes an event that does some good. So we had hot dogs that benefited a group, wandered through the booths of vendors of other stuff and even got to see some kitties from the local shelter. (Replacements lets their employees bring their pets to work – they are dog people. I never see cats in their employee and pet of the month pictures!)

We went inside because Maffa had never taken the free tour. It’s incredible. I did this years ago with my sister and brother-in-law, who share the dish genes, so I was happy to do it again. Maffa was blown away, and I must admit to a certain amount of awe – They are adding another 500,000 square feet of warehouse space! We had also taken a quick hit at the highly discounted room, so when the tour was over, Maffa worked the overstocks and I went back to the 75% off room. I was having great success adding to a set I began with chipped pieces from yard sales of yore, Spode Florence.

Back outside, we hit the Lenox overstock sidewalk sale, which also included discarded silver chests and Pacific cloth flatware rolls. $5 got you a chest, or drawer liner, and $1 got you a piece of flannel impregnated with silver stuff that attracts tarnish. People were also crowded in there as they combed through bins of stainless flatware ($1 per piece) and the boxes of Lenox. I had a Chicago moment when I saw the unmistakable soft green, edged with dark green of flatware rolls from Marshall Field and Company. Needless to say, I culled them all from the boxes and then took home the nicest ones. (Some were pretty trashed.) In the old days, when you bought a piece of silver at Field’s, they put it into one of their flannel silver bags before they wrapped it for you. Each bag had a green ribbon sewn on a corner with the store’s name.

So what was the haul like? When I got home yesterday, I washed everything – a pair of Lenox Rutledge salad plates that I swear I cannot see why they were discarded – same for a pair of Pickard Malverns. A cup in my sister’s Wedgwood – where is the flaw? I can’t find it! And a whole host of other pieces that are chipped or cracked, but still serviceable. My neatest score is a plate in Spode Lancaster Cobalt that has a crack which would drop the center out if it managed to connect. What a glorious item – BK stretched the springs on a plate holder so that it wouldn’t put too much stress on it, and the plate went up on the wall in our dining room. It glitters like the queen’s jewels. There are a number of small plates and saucers that I will use as bases for pillar candles, and some cups that will be nice for tiny flower arrangements. We found an Arabia of Finland serving bowl that has a miniscule chip on it. I’m looking forward to using that for a long time. We even found a Ginori cream soup bowl decorated with sweet pea flowers, and its matching saucer that is decorated with green peas! Maffa will use that for dip, or a cup of soup.

The question people ask me is what I will do with more china. Admittedly, I need another stray pair of salad plates like the nation needs more debt, but I always manage to find uses. I’m at the point where I like to set the table for Kitty and myself with something more than the everyday Emile Henry and Betty Crocker Oneida. The flatware rolls enable to me keep two place settings and a few serving pieces handy so I can do it in style. Don’t save it for good. China benefits from getting a bath. It hates dry and prefers a little humidity to keep it from becoming too brittle. And don’t use the same pieces over and over. If you have twelve and routinely use four, rotate which four you use, and enjoy your toys!