Memories of Grandma...

Yes, another china set.... let me explain. 

It has been a very busy and very rainy day..I leave tomorrow morning for the cottage and as usual, I had procrastinated and was not organized and ready to go..not packed at all, and had not even gone grocery shopping! So it was a run-around kind of day...I didn't even get out into the garden to look for a flower to blip. Not once. It is now evening..hmmm, what to do for a blip?  Well, I do have a never-ending supply of china just sitting there in the china cabinet being ignored........so why not? But which set? 

I really do enjoy the challenge every day of writing something for this journal. I love to write, but there is not always a lot to say. Like what do you say about a haircut...or a set of china?  I picked this china set tonight as there is a bit of a story/memory attached to it.  A little something to write about.

First of all it was my Grandma's everyday china - I never knew her to have another one. It is Rosebud Chintz, by Copeland Spode. I understand that it was quite a popular and common pattern, so over the years, I was able to find a lot of replacement pieces; pieces probably rarely used as they are all pristine and chip-less. I remember Grandma's china NOT being pristine...Her teacups were often crackled and tea-stained. There were chips on some of the plates...They were very well-used. But they were loved and they were my Grandma's and that made them special.

There is another memory I now attach to Grandma's china. My sister and I, on one of our vacations in the UK, spent a week in Cornwall, and, of course, we visited the gardens and National Trust sites there. One of those sites was Trelissick. It was lovely, not our favourite garden of the trip, we thought, but we did enjoy our visit.  But before leaving, we discovered an interesting little connection to Grandma's china; we read that the house and garden were owned and donated to the NT by Ida Copeland. - the same family who owned the Spode factory, and that the flowers in the gardens were used as models for the patterns painted on their china. Who would have thought?  We had unknowingly just visited the birthplace of Grandma's Rosebud Chintz!  At that moment, Trelissick moved up a notch on our favourite garden list and for us, it will always be connected to Grandma's tea cups and plates. 

I just love these little surprises we encounter on our travels...and am looking forward to more of them. Surely soon we will be able to travel again. but for now, I am excited to be going north again. The cottage beckons..