Plate from Privy dig...as good as new( Almost)

[thegrammarfairy]

What other markings does it have?

I'd happily look it up myself, or give you links to some web sites if you'd prefer.

Boy, there's nothing like finding all the pieces. My dear husband is the digger and I'm the research and reconstruction arm...I absolutely love putting together not only the two or ten or twenty shards that once were a mixing bowl or a pressed-glass compote, but also the history of the house and its former owners, their life stories, the old newspaper ads with their inflated claims, etc. Gives me a picture of the past that you just don't get in school books....of course I could do without the, shall we say, up close and personal insights into the 19th-c. diet...

TGF

 

[kwalker]

I hate to bring up an old thread but I saw your first picture here and something came back to me. Sunday I had the urge to dig a little at a dump I've been working on. I remember pulling out half a cup with handle and all and saying "well this looks really nice. Kind of Asian looking." and put it at the top of the pit. The cup has the same three column building that your plate does and is also the same color. Now that I think about it, I've pulled maybe 5 or 6 shards of the same type. Small world I guess. Like I said, looking at your picture shook a lightbulb on in my head []

 

[thegrammarfairy]

Oh, I love it when my husband finds a bottle from the same product, or a piece of china in the same pattern, as he's found elsewhere. It makes the past as real as the present in yet another way: two families got their medicines at the same pharmacy, or the department store sold two sets of the same china pattern, or the working stiffs all drank the same brew.

Blue willow is/was one of the most popular china patterns of all time, along with Fiestaware, Moss Rose, Tea Leaf, and the good old Wheat Pattern. (If you've dug more than 3 privies, I know you've seen the Wheat Pattern, or the Wheat and Hops variation.) Half the firms in existence made either shameless knockoffs (especially the older ones) or patterns that obviously were meant to cash in on the popularity of the original (as with Fiesta). : )

TGF