Love that Lustreware

We were in town and had a few minutes to spare.   We decided to wander through the antique/flea market warehouse.   It's one of those places with lots of little rented booths full of everything from old toys and collectables, old furniture, antiques and everything in between.   Of course there were items which caught my eye, like a handcrank Singer 99k which looked like it had never been used and an old flax spinning wheel in perfect condition.  However, I had exactly a single $5 bill in my pocket, a toonie and a half a handful of nickles and dimes.   Not enough for a big shopping spree, that's for certain.

However for a grand total of $5.65, I found  some lustreware.  I love lustreware.  It's not horribly old.  While there are lustreware techniques which date to Coptic Egypt and the Roman times, and some different styles from the 19th century, most of what I love dates from1930 - 1950.  It's pretty.  It's shiny and it's relatively cheap.  I mean if  you only want a complete set, you can pay a pretty penny for it, but for odds and ends, incomplete sets and such, it's often priced to sell quickly.   I have full sized tea cups/saucers from a variety of different sets, a teapot, a few small plates and a creamer.    I also have several different partial sets of doll dishes.

Lustreware doll dinner service

This is the most complete set of lustreware doll dishes that I have.  At some point it was probably a complete dinner service set.  I've seen some sets which even include silverware! This set still has the teapot, a tureen, what I'm thinking is some sort of gravy dish, a platter, both creamer and sugar bowl, all the saucers but only 2 tea cups and 5 plates.


Today I found this small set of doll dishes for $5.  It's a lovely pattern and since most of the lustreware I find is gold/ orange, the blue stands out nicely. It's also nice that this set has a

Lustreware doll dishes

tea pot.  Most of my doll dishes don't have tea pots.  I  played with china tea sets when I was a child though they weren't nearly as fine and pretty, being more modern.   I'm certain that the tea pot was always the first item to break.

Included in this batch of dishes was this smaller but full sized sugar bowl.  Noritake seems to be the name printed on the bottom of a lot of lustreware dishes, as is on the bottom of this little pot.  It's missing a spoon, but I have a tiny metal spoon which would fit nicely.

Lustreware sugar bowl

So for $5.65 ( gotta add those taxes), I got both the doll dishes and the little sugar bowl.  I was pretty happy with that deal today.