Oh my! My mother gave me more family heirlooms for my birthday earlier this month - this is an amazing dollhouse porcelain dinnerware set that belonged to my grandmother. She was born in 1916, so I'm estimating this set to be from the 1920's. The packaging is original and there are enough plates for twelve guests, but unfortunately the guests have to eat with their hands as I don't currently have any cutlery.
Just a little rugged around the corners, but all the pieces are there.
The blue stripes are hand painted, but the flowers look like decals. I'm not sure if the decals were originally of varying quality, or if my grandmother has played with these so much that some of the flowers are barely there anymore.
I have a non-existent ceramic vocabulary especially in English, but just look at these plates! There's a swirly pattern on the plates, not too visible in all of them, some also have some extra grainy bits under the glaze. The overall quality varies quite a lot, but I don't mind - it only reminds of the people who made these dishes.
I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I was a huge dollhouse enthusiast when I was in my early teens. I did like my little dollhouse when I was smaller, but the historically accurate 1:12 dollhouses ended up being a real hit later. My mother and I even traveled to London just so we could buy a dollhouse kit for me to build. For some reason the right moment to build the house never came (the biggest reason probably being that it needed to turn out perfect, which makes beginning extremely difficult), so it's still in my parents' basement waiting for me to have enough room to build and keep it. I'll probably be a granny when that time comes, but c'est la vie. One day I'll have my little hat shop and a charming milliner spinster living above it. The milliner will have spectacular dinner parties for all her intellectual friends and everyone will have utensils to eat with.