Sweet Pea Tea!

I have missed blogging here for a couple of week's as life has been a bit hectic for me, not least needing to spend time in the veg patch getting things organised for the new growing season. With Easter weekend, I decided I had to make time for taking my pictures and for making a lovely chocolate cake for our Easter celebrations.

My choice of cup today is a gorgeous Royal Winton trio in the delightful Sweet Pea pattern. This is one of the most popular patterns for chintz collectors and as a result pieces always command a high price, so I was very pleased to add this lovely trio to my collection.

According to one of my chintz reference books, Collecting Royal Winton Chintz by Muriel Miller the pattern depicts "vivid blossoms of the sweet pea in colours of pink, deep blue, deep yellow and white" arranged against a background of leaves and tendrils. "The ground colour varies from a pale cream to a deep yellow/ochre".

Sweet peas are one of my favourite flowers and I have just planted some plants this last weekend in the hope of getting a lovely display of these flowers in the summer.

This set has a classically art deco design, a lovely deep saucer and a geometric handle.

Here is the backstamp. The pattern was introduced in 1936. Apparently Queen Mary ordered a teapot, a salad bowl and salad servers in this pattern in 1936. The Queen commended the pattern for "its fresh bright unity of colour". The teapot cost 2/- (10p) and the salad bowl and servers 3/6d (17.5p). Oh for a time machine to go back in time for some china shopping!

Here is the chocolate cake I made, this is egg and dairy free, including some of my favourite white chocolate buttons. I used a vintage pink plate for the cake, I think this colour always looks lovely for serving chocolate.

Here is my scrumptious teatime treat, served with decaffinated Earl Grey tea - served in the gorgeous warm sunshine we had over the weekend - perfect!

If you would like to know more about Teacup Tuesday, pop over to Terri's lovely Artful Affirmations blog here or at Martha's blog here. You can find links to other people participating in Teacup Tuesday on these blogs too.

Thank you for popping by my virtual cabinet again this week.

Elaine

Florence on a Tuesday!

Welcome to my latest post for Teacup Tuesday. I am pleased to share another beauty from my chintz collection, that has been sitting in a box wrapped in newspaper for ages.  So it is nice to put it on display for a while in my virtual china cabinet.

This is the lovely pattern Florence from Royal Winton which was made by Grimwades, who are described in one of my reference books as "the leader in the field of chintz ware" outstripping many other manufacturers in the number of patterns they produced. I adore this design, because the black background shows the beautiful vibrant colours to such great effect.



I tried both flash and natural sunlight today to try and show the colours of this pattern to best effect. I didn't realise until I downloaded these photos, that I had taken a picture that shows the chip in this poor little cup very clearly.

Many of my cherished pieces of chintz have chips or cracks. Chintz is very pricey and perfect pieces are often beyond my budget. So I buy damaged pieces and give them a good home. The busy patterns on chintz often hide the damage quite well in the display cabinet so they don't look too bad!

According to my copy of Collecting Royal Winton Chintz - Muriel M Miller Grimwades introduced chintz patterns in 1913. Florence appears to be a pattern produced in the 1950s. The pattern includes pink and cream carnations, belladonna lilies, and small blue and pink flowers against a black ground. This back stamp includes a registration number printed in gold for Canada.

I had hoped to have some lovely homebaked cookies to show you with my china and a nice cup of tea today, but unfortunately I couldn't control myself and ate them before I got around to taking my photographs today!!

If you would like to know more about Teacup Tuesday, pop over to Terri's lovely Artful Affirmations blog here. You can find links to other people participating in Teacup Tuesday this week as well, so do pop round and visit them too.

Thank you for popping by my virtual china cabinet!

Elaine x