Dishes And Fishes: In Which I Am A Dish Dectective

Hey, you know what? It’s 9 days into the new year and we haven’t talked about dishes yet. I KNOW!

Well. The DIL and I have casual conversations about cars, mostly about car colors. She likes the way Nissan does Black Amethyst on their Rogue model. I couldn’t afford to give her a car for Christmas but I did find a lovely old candy dish made of Black Amethyst depression glass. If you haven’t seen it, it’s glass that sits there minding its own business looking like shiny opaque black glass and then you hold it up to the light and BOOM! – purple. She would probably rather have had the car but was too polite to say so. I think she liked the candy dish, though.

The vase is a good example of the way the light shows purple when held to a strong light. The low dish on the red background is the actual candy dish for the DIL.

Back in the summer, I was just cruising around looking at things on eBay and I came across some wacky bowls that had a simple design which reminded me of those 3D chalk drawings that make it look like there’s a hole in the sidewalk but it’s really a trick of perspective. I shared it in an IM conversation with my daughter because it was the kind of off-beat thing she would like – and she did – and then we moved on. But I couldn’t stop thinking about them so imagine my happiness to find that they were still available. I bought them as a Christmas present for my daughter who does a lot of random informal entertaining.

Cut to other random eBay trawling. I thought I might be able to find other pieces for her but without ID, I was limited to “hardboiled egg dishes” and “tomato dishes”. So I gave up and turned to one of her other main areas of interest – keeping her food from touching on a plate. This must have been  a big thing in the past because eBay is loaded with vintage three-section dishes called grill plates. One of my first searches brought up these:

Those tomatoes!!! The way the food casts little shadows!!! YES!!!

Again no markings or manufacturer ID but of course I snatched them up because who wouldn’t? Duh. It was set of two and the other plate has a lemon, some parsley and a beheaded sardine on it. … Wait … A sardine, you say? Like they featured on New Scandinavian Cooking?– a cooking show filmed in Norway which just happens to be the source country of Figgjo Flint dinnerware?
Oh yeah. It’s on now. And sure enough – these are Figgjo Flint dishes. I managed to cobble together 7 grill plates, one salad plate and the bowls for her Christmas gift but I am hampered by the fact that eBay sellers don’t know how to list these things without ID  and I don’t have a definite way to search for them. eBay.co.uk is a different story. That joint is loaded with them and they’re marked on the back. Look at this stuff:

right? RIGHT? Nothing at all as interesting as these pieces ever shows up on American eBay.

Sadly – tragically – the sellers there won’t ship to the USA and even if they did it would be a frightful cost, plus a customs fee and the very likely issue of damage while in transit. So I continue to do sad random searches for these and to content myself with the knowledge while that I might not have a 7 piece hors d’oeuvre set, I do have possession of the only plate featuring a beheaded sardine that I have ever seen.

mine

Post Script: I have a feeling that my daughter doesn’t even like these.

No Fish Wrap Dish Wrap

Sami and I are squabbling over packing away the Christmas Stangl. I say it doesn’t really need a sign on the side of the box to find it next year. He says it does because he might not recognize what’s inside as a Christmas item.

Newspaper isn’t as plentiful as it used to be so I had to use Christmas wrap to protect the dishes.

Here’s a photo of our new pierogi ornament.

On Dancer, On Prancer, On Donder and Stashu

I realize that I spend most of my personal internet time on my iPhone now and that’s why I’m not here for blogging much anymore. Must work on that.

White Christmas

A little dog wonders how he ended up on the wrong side of the door.

Stedman the corgi pays a Christmas visit to an old friend.

Twelve hours later, a perfect day comes to an end.

“Garland” – Stangl’s Christmas pattern

New Old Things

yellow trellis

Unless you are one of my new internet dish buddies, you have no idea of the amount of delicious agony that culminated my the acquisition of this Mikasa chop plate in a pattern designed by Ben Seibel.

Of course, you remember when I was hypnotized by one glance at a stunning dinner plate. Was that only a week ago? Since then, I’ve become quite the student of Ben Seibel. Turns out that highly stylized flowers appeared in many of his dinnerware designs.

please make me stop staring

But funky flowers are not his only hallmark. I don’t know enough yet to quote chapter and verse about when each pattern was designed but I can make a pretty good guess about the decade based on the color palettes and design styles. If you look through an eBay search for Ben Seibel, you can see the colors move from pinks and turquoise to yellows and greens to what the baby boomers used to call earth tones. The patterns follow suit by changing from atomic to nature to graphic to hand-made pottery looks.

I could go on and on. As you know. But it’s Easter weekend and I have a big day ahead of me that includes:

• giving the dog a bath
• rotating the area rugs
• pulling out the Stangl for Easter dinner
• painting two deck chairs
• scrubbing all of the bathrooms

And then I’ll have lunch.

Saturday mornings just brim with optimism, don’t they?

So the Yellow Trellis pattern is on its way to me. I plan to use it as a tray to convey martinis and margaritas around the deck this summer. Can’t you just see it?