China Patterns
Photo by Ann Cook
What’s on my mind?
I never cared much about china patterns when I was about to get married. It just wasn’t something that mattered to me. Maybe that’s because I didn’t grow up with friends who cared about that sort of thing, or because Mom wasn’t around to tell me if I should. We’ll just blame all that on boarding school.
When David and I got engaged, I decided not to register at any department stores for wedding gifts. I didn’t care about picking out a china pattern, silverware, and crystal, or a $50 china gravy boat. I've always felt uncomfortable telling people what gifts to buy, so I left it to chance, which is probably why we ended up with four wooden salad bowl sets and an orange juice pitcher shaped like a chicken.
When my parents returned to the States in the 80s, they opened the crates they’d stored 14 years earlier when we moved to Pakistan. I can imagine how that felt, just like a time capsule. Inside was my mom’s china, which I had never seen or heard about before. It was an exquisite design, a delicate Art Deco pattern in pink and blue, with silver trim, and enough place settings for four.
You have to understand my Mom a little. She graduated from Cal Berkeley in the 50s with a design degree and had a good eye for everything she did. When she was preparing to get married, she didn’t bother to pick out china at Capwells like her friends. Instead, she ordered hers from a magazine ad, probably just to satisfy her mother. But then, she went all-out practical and bought plain white dishes.
A recent trip to my favorite junk store in Bakersfield, Junktique, reinforced my thinking about china patterns. I noticed they had full sets of expensive, barely used china for pennies on the dollar. It made me feel sad, picturing a hopeful bride forty years ago carefully choosing her china pattern for married life, registering for it with friends and family, only for the china to end up in divorce on a junk store shelf.
I've never used Mom's china because it's irreplaceable, and I'm afraid it might break. So I keep it stored in the attic, where at least it's safe, which seems contradictory for something meant to be used. I've held onto it all these years because it's too beautiful to let go, and because of what it represents–her passing it down to me.
Like Mom, all my dishes are plain white.
