Tea for Fourteen

My mom visited last week and we decided to finally get the china out of storage and display it in our new china hutch. While we bought the hutch over a month ago, I hadn't quite gotten around to this step. That said, we only recently put the final touches on the new/old hutch as it needed a bit of work when we brought it home. 

We knew one of the doors rubbed a little, but upon further investigation the problem was more than just planing off the bottom millimeter of the door. We found a cracked middle support and the entire bottom of the hutch wasn't quite square. The Farmer couldn't quite figure out what had happened to it to create these issues until he recalled his days as a three-year-old climber. Yep...the bottom doors had been used as a stepstool from a youngster in previous days. So we took the back off. We re-squared it. We re-nailed it. We re-glued it. We added in another support in the middle. And we did plane off a millimeter from the bottom of the offending door.

And by "we" I mean The Farmer. I just held things. 

By the time we finished the hutch my mom was visiting in two weeks so I just waited for her to help me figure out what to do. Because, well, I have just a few pieces of china...

Disclaimer: Images may appear larger than in real life, but they really are this large.

Let me explain the drama around the "family" china.

My mother is the keeper of the actual "family" china. It is a cream design with raised scalloped edges and was a part of her father's family. Quite pretty. My mother remembers them from when she was little.

Until...

My great-aunt Jean visited from Texas one summer and she and my grandmother, Lottie, got into some sort of argument. My mother doesn't know what the argument was about - my grandmother never spoke of it. But the result was all the china was packed up and shipped to Texas. My grandmother wouldn't speak of the incident and no one was allowed to mention it. So the family china that was used for special occasions disappeared from the house until aunt Jean died and the china was shipped back.

It was stored in the back attic and never touched again.*

So where did this china come from? 

My grandmother bought it at an estate sale in the 1980s when she was in Arizona visiting her sister for the winter. 

I remember when this happened. Grandma made a big deal about it. While they were special dishes she didn't preclude anyone from using them on those special occasions. So yes, while I was merely a pre-teen I got to use the fancy plates. How fun!

She wanted them to be used, and while she knew she had 11 grandchildren (and a number of adult children) that might break them she wanted to enjoy them. So my grandmother declared that the first person who broke an item would inherit the china; an exciting yet scary proposition. You didn't want to be the first one.

My cousin Angie dropped the gravy boat the first celebration we used them. 

She inherited the lot. 

It was one of the few items specifically spelled out in my grandmother's will. 

Now the original set my grandmother purchased at that estate sale was not as large as what I have now inherited from Angie, courtesy of her daughter, Jennifer. 

But when Angie inherited the dish set it was missing a gravy boat and this was just around the time eBay started to emerge. And a lot of people were selling their gravy boats online.

The end result was a few more items that just a single gravy boat were purchased. 

Such as two gravy boats. (Just in case.)

So last week my mom and I unpacked:

41 dinner plates

26 salad plates

46 dessert plates

34 saucers

27 dessert bowls

17 large bowls

19 coffee cups

14 tea cups

2 butter dishes

3 covered dishes (1 slightly broken)

5 serving bowls

3 large platters

3 small platters

1 oval serving bowl

2 gravy boats

1 salt/pepper shaker set

2 sugar bowls

2 creamers

1 set of candlestick holders

and 

1 dinner bell

Lest you think I am greedy I decided to keep a reasonable number of these items as my china and the rest was packed up to be given back - as single items or in small sets - to family members. 

But thank goodness my mom was here because who knows how to arrange 27 dessert bowls in a china hutch?

My mom does.

So here's to you, grandma Lottie...

We're even using the correct cups.

And here's to you, dear cousin Angie.

We'll use the gravy boat and think of you every time.

*The mysterious argument was confirmed when my mom found the china in the attic after my grandma passed away. The boxes of china were all marked in my grandpa's handwriting, which was odd as they were the only items in the entire attic in his writing. And...all the dinner plates were missing. Hmm. I like to think those dinner plates never made it to Texas.