Dinnerware Diary

"His Majesty" by Johnson Brothers

Hello, I'm Pinot, an English cocker spaniel, and my human, Ross, asked if I would lend a paw for this posting. (That's my penguin, "Torpedo," in the picture - he keeps me company in my cubicle.) We work at Replacements, Ltd., the largest supplier of discontinued china and dinnerware in the world. Ross has been very busy, getting the word out about special china, crystal, silver, and collectible items for the Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas holidays.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite days of the year. English cocker spaniels were bred to be upland bird-hunting dogs.  Bird, get it? So naturally, I love turkey with all the fixings!

In the 19th century, breeders in England took runt puppies from their litters of springer spaniels, and bred the runts to get us smaller-sized "cockers." We specialize in upland birds - pheasant, quail, ruffed grouse, and woodcock. We're known for our "soft" mouths, meaning we're gentle carrying the birds we retrieve, we have pleasing dispositions, and we're tenacious in the field. Since we're smaller, we don't range as far afield (good for older hunters), and since our weight is lighter, we can work in marshy areas (where woodcock love to hide) without sinking in the muck!

While turkeys are too big for me to handle (unless they're carved up!), I still enjoy seeing them. Here at Replacements, Ltd., we have turkeys on more things than you can imagine - plates, cups and saucers, bowls, platters, you name it! And not just turkeys. We have pheasants, quail, ruffed grouse, woodcock, doves, rails, peacocks, songbirds, exotic parrots, even phoenixes! It's a bird dog's paradise!

When Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to his daughter and recommended the turkey over the bald eagle as America’s national bird, I'll bet he never thought a gobbler might be raised to the status of royalty!  But the turkey is king of the barnyard and lord of the Thanksgiving table. What better way to celebrate that tradition than with a big table set with His Majesty china by Johnson Brothers, your turkey, dressing, and gravy cooked to perfection, and your family, friends, and special four-footed friends around you? Yummy!

Ross tells me Replacements, Ltd. is offering a great 67-piece set of Johnson Brothers His Majesty that includes 12 cups and saucers, 12 dinner plates, 12 salad plates, 12 square salad plates, along with 1 creamer, 1 sugar bowl with lid, 1 oval vegetable bowl, 1 gravy boat with underplate, and 1 relish dish, for $599.95, a savings of 20% off the manufacturer's suggested retail price of $746.50.  Be sure to check these sets out - don't be a "pokey puppy!"

His Majesty is high-quality, scallop-shaped, rimmed earthenware, with a huge tom turkey spreading his feathers in the center of the plate, and an embossed rim covered with nuts, fruits, berries, and vegetables, with a thin, painted cable design on the outside rim. The colors of the pattern are earth tones, perfect for your autumn table.

Ross says His Majesty was produced between 1955 and 1983, and pieces from the pattern are highly sought-after. (That's his fancy way of saying people will pay a lot of money to get them. Lucky for you, you don't have to!) Designed from an original engraving, the tom turkey on His Majesty made his first appearance as an accent plate in Johnson Brothers Friendly Village, a very popular multi-motif pattern.  Demand for the accent plate was so great that Johnson Brothers introduced His Majesty just two years after Friendly Village was released.  As you might expect, these patterns complement each other beautifully on the table.  Friendly Village is available in a variety of designs and backstamps, so click here for a complete listing of the many Johnson Brothers patterns we have available.

Like Thanksgiving Day turkey, Johnson Brothers dinnerware is rich in history and tradition.  Ross says in 1882 three brothers, Alfred, Fredrick, and Henry Johnson, who were grandsons of the famous Meakin dinnerware family, purchased in a bankruptcy sale the Charles Street Works at Stoke-on-Trent in the famous fine china-producing region of Staffordshire, England.  Building a reputation on basic whiteware known as "semi-porcelain," the Johnson Brothers created dinnerware that had the delicate characteristics of fine china, but the durability of ironstone. In 1900 a fourth brother, Robert, relocated to the United States and established a presence for the company in North America.  Humans on both sides of the Atlantic have enjoyed the quality and durability of Johnson Brothers china for more than a century.

Ross says to be sure to take advantage of this special offer, and order your 67-piece set of Johnson Brothers His Majesty for this holiday season, while we have them in stock! You can mix and match with your Friendly Village collection, or start a new set of each! It’s fun, and your table will be gorgeous. To order, call us toll-free at 1-800-REPLACE (1-800-737-5223) 7 days a week, 8:00am to 10:00pm ET (we answer the phone very quickly!), or order on our secure, easy-to-use Web site. To browse in more than 297,000 patterns in china, crystal, silver, and collectibles, visit our Web site today!

Don't foget - we always like hearing from our readers, so e-mail me (or Ross) at ross.howell@replacements.com. Have some original holiday decorating ideas? Got any recipes for homemade dog treats? Send them in! Or just e-mail to say hello. Until the next time, keep your tail up and your tail waggin'. Pinot

My Favorite Museum Pieces - Coalport

The Victorian Rococo Coalbrookdale Bone China by Coalport that is our Museum Feature represents the culmination of a remarkably competitive and innovative period in the history of English china.

Before the 18th century, porcelain was made only in the Far East. As the exotic material made its way to Europe (Marco Polo is often credited with introducing porcelain to the Occident, or western European region), pottery makers on the Continent became fascinated with trying to reproduce it. Their early efforts utilized soft-paste porcelain, which was fired at lower temperatures, was more porous, and far less delicate in form than the Oriental hard-paste porcelain. Over hundreds of years, artisans in Europe began to unlock some of porcelain’s secrets. By the early 18th century, often under the cloak of state secrecy, European artisans in Meissen, Limoges, and Sevres were producing beautiful, hard-paste porcelain pieces, so rare and expensive, that they were likely to be found only in the courts of kings, the estates of nobility, or the manor houses of wealthy mercantilists.

Manufacturers in England both admired and envied porcelain makers on the Continent. Unlike their European competitors, who enjoyed the benefit of royal patronage to underwrite their costs and guarantee their markets, English manufacturers were private enterprises, entirely dependent upon commercial sales in a highly competitive marketplace. As Simon Spero notes in his chapter in the wonderfully informative book, “Sotheby’s Concise Encyclopedia of Porcelain,” edited by David Battie, “Of the fifteen or so factories established in England prior to 1780, only two sustained production into the nineteenth century.”

But change was in the air. In 1751 Dr. John Wall, founder of Royal Worcester, developed a soft-paste porcelain using soapstone that would not crack or shatter in boiling water. Now pots could be produced for the tea lovers of England – who were legion. About two years later, Royal Worcester perfected a method for transfer printing over glaze to imprint designs on china, greatly reducing the expense of items that previously could be decorated only by hand painting.

Josiah Wedgwood was also experimenting with ways to refine English porcelain. He developed black basalt, fine-grained stoneware that was superior to any that had been previously produced. Wedgwood also developed “creamware,” true fine china that was easy to produce, relatively inexpensive to make, easily decorated, and attractive to royalty and commoner alike. In 1775 Wedgwood introduced his crowning achievement, “Jasperware,” the unglazed porcelain with classical figures in white or cream against a contrasting background, now virtually synonymous with his company’s name.

With these marketing advances and cost-reducing measures, English manufacturers could produce items affordable to the middle class, where sales volume would support their factories, while they continued their experiments to match the delicacy of the porcelain wares of their European rivals. One such experiment is attributed to Thomas Frye, who in 1748 added bone ash to his soft-paste porcelain formula. A few years later, the process would be popularized by a man named Josiah Spode. By 1820, bone china was the predominant type of dinnerware produced in England, and the phrase, “English fine bone china,” would become known around the world.

Change was in the air for the art world as well. The restraint of Neoclassicism was beginning to give way to the lavish designs of the Victorian era, including a revival of Rococo. And here is where we return to the lovely Coalbrookdale pieces, made by Coalport sometime between 1820 and 1835, in our Replacements, Ltd. Museum collection.

English pottery makers now had developed the materials to form, decorate, and glaze such intricate pieces, and had built the market to support their production. In design and manufacture of these items, Coalport of Shropshire excelled.

Coalport was owned by John Rose, who at the very beginning of the 19th century was involved with different partners, and manufactured primarily hard-paste porcelain wares, sometimes supplying them as blanks for final decoration in London. Around 1814, Rose apparently began working mostly in bone china, and the pattern name, Coalbrookdale, began to emerge.

Authors Henry Sandon, Joan Jones, and Garrison Stradling point out in “Sotheby’s Concise Encyclopedia of Porcelain,” that Rose, strongly under the influence of manufacturers in Sevres, employed “two artists, Cook and Randall. Cook’s specialty was flowers and Randall’s fancy birds.” It would seem that no artist’s abilities exceeded those of Cook – for Coalport, he must have been an invaluable asset. “Flowers and leaves are the very embodiment of Victorian Rococo,” the authors note, “and were applied to a wide range of objects.” Some objects, like teapots, were so covered with delicately pointed, easily chipped blossoms that they were “almost unusable.” Not only were specialized artists required to make such pieces, but specialized workers were as well. Sandon, Jones, and Stradling continue, “Flower-making is a highly specialized craft and only the nimblest, smallest female fingers could fashion the single petals, stamens and stems which were joined with liquid slip to build the flower.”

The detail work on these Coalport pieces is hard to believe. The small sugar bowl with lid stands just 4 1/4 inches tall (with rose lid handle) and 5 3/4 inches wide (with twig-shaped handles). A total of 42 individually colored blossoms decorate the piece, along with gold trim, and yet the design remains light, elegant, and balanced! The footed candy dish stands 8 inches tall (with rose lid handle) and 6 1/2 inches wide (with twig handles). The yellow flowers on the base are just 3/8 inch in diameter. This piece counts an incredible 145 individual blossoms, each one hand crafted and painted!

As always, I look forward to hearing from my readers.  Feel free to drop me an email if you like at ross.howell@replacements.com.  You can email me or call for directions. I look forward to seeing you!