The Clam Rampant

Kasia March 19th, 2009

Kit put up a post copping to a secret dish fetish. At the behest of my beloved husband, I am posting our family’s secret dish sickness. Ora pro nobis…

Once upon a time…a very long time ago…specifically, probably in the first or second decade of the twentieth century…my maternal great-grandparents (both sets) got married. Different days, different years…both probably somewhere in Illinois, perhaps even the same city, but apart from the fact that they’d one day be in-laws, that was the extent of the resemblance.

Except that, in those days, when you got married, you almost certainly had not been living together beforehand (scandal!), and in fact, especially for the woman, were probably just leaving your parents’ home. So it was common practice to register for, among other things, a set of dishes (usually nice china) for your wedding gifts.

Great-grandmother E. found a lovely Spode pattern that suited her to a tee. Great-grandmother C. favored this Haviland pattern:

Lovely, isn’t it?

However, one doesn’t use fine china every day. Especially not when one has three children and a farm. So she also (I don’t know if it was for wedding or if they bought themselves) got a set of Metlox stoneware for common use. It looked a lot like this…

…except without the trim around the edge, and with a sort of dark cream/light brown color for the actual dish that forms the background. And deep green scalloping as a border. Wish I could find a picture, but maybe later. (If you look at the logo at the top, those rooster dishes at the front of the logo were interspersed with them, and are a good representation of the color and the green border: http://www.replacements.com/registration/form.htm?=freeemail 0 )

** UPDATE ** It looks like THIS!!!!

OK.

So my grandmother, great-uncle, and great-aunt all grew up, in one way or another, with the dishes pictured above.

My great-uncle, being a man, does not care about dishes (or at least I’m assuming that).  I do not know the details, but one way or another, when Great-grandmother C. died, my grandmother got both sets of dishes.

In the meantime, however, my grandmother had married my grandfather. They registered for a lovely, classic Wedgwood pattern. I don’t know the name of the pattern offhand, but it’s a just-off-white, with sort of fluted edges. Very nice.

So the Wedgwood became her “dinner” dishes, the Metlox became her “breakfast” dishes, and the Haviland was for very special occasions.

Then my mother married my father, and they in turn registered for dishes. Dansk, to be exact:

Ah, I remember those dishes…

Anyway. My mother’s sister (Aunt A.) gets married and registers for these:

and my mother’s other sister (Aunt P.) gets married and registers for a lovely set of Mikasa, the pattern name of which I do not know (and thus cannot look up).

Meanwhile, Great-grandmother E. also goes to her eternal reward. (I hope it involved Manhattans, as I understand she loved them.) So the Spode has come back into play.

Aunt A.’s marriage, sadly, does not last as long as the dishes do. After the divorce, she trades her wedding dishes to my grandmother for the “breakfast” dishes. So – I grow up knowing those as “the breakfast dishes” and the other dishes as “Aunt A.’s dishes.”

Aunt A. loves the Haviland pattern that was her grandmother’s. Aunt P. loves the Spode pattern that was her other grandmother’s. Grandma gives each one to the one who loves it.

My parents get divorced. Mom keeps the Dansk.

Aunt P., unfortunately, also gets divorced. So she packs away her wedding dishes, and the Spode, for another day. Starts using Corelle.

Grandma goes to her eternal reward a little over 10 years ago. My mother arranges for TBS to inherit the Wedgwood and for me to inherit the blue “breakfast” dishes, which I quite like.

Sadly, Aunt A. died only a year after Grandma – she’d had cancer – and her dishes needed to be dealt with.

No one in my mother’s generation wanted Great-aunt M. – who started dropping hints about how much she liked the Metlox dishes that had been her mother’s – to have the dishes. Old family arguments over who had gotten what in the past, come home to roost. Shame, because I think at this point we could’ve given the Metlox to someone who would’ve really liked them, and then been done with the matter.

My mother starts pushing for me to take the Metlox. I have just moved out on my own and am using the dishes I always thought of as Grandma’s (the blue breakfast dishes). I don’t have much use for the Metlox (which is a fuller set), nor do I really have a soft spot for the Metlox the way I do the others. I resist; but she sweetens the deal by offering to fill out the set, get rid of the ones Aunt A. had interspersed that have big roosters on them (very French Country), etc…and she promises that they can stay in her attic until I’m ready to take them.

I agree.

She goes onto EBay, buys and sells like crazy, and comes out with an incredibly complete set. I mean, I even have a milk pitcher.

Then, being hooked on the EBay thing, she sells off her Dansk dishes and buys some Pfaltzgraff she’s been eyeing for some time.

I shake my head but figure, hey – it’s her attic she’s cluttering up. Meanwhile, I move from a small apartment to a slightly larger (but still small) condo. The blue dishes clash magnificently with my kitchen, which has a sort of Tuscan feel (complete with olive-plant tile backsplash), so my stepmother buys me a cheap set of Meijer dishes with grapes on them as a housewarming gift. I pack the blue breakfast dishes carefully and put them in my none-too-large storage locker in the basement.

Then Mom decides – pretty much on the spur of the moment – to move to New Mexico. I have to clear out the Metlox almost immediately. It is, to this day, sitting packed away in my basement. Something like a dozen boxes of varying sizes…

Then Canuck proposes.

Anyone here remember that the Canuck is legally blind?

Yeah. He doesn’t like dishes with patterns on them, because it’s hard for him to tell when they’re clean.

So we…registered for these:

…and we are dreading when Mom and Aunt P. will shuffle off this mortal coil; both because we love them both dearly, and because there will be

SO

MANY

DISHES!!!!

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