Dishes for Autumn: Royal Staffordshire "Charlotte"

Somehow I ended up with several sets of china (mostly antique) over the years.  As a result, I like to switch them out seasonally and use different dishes at different times of the year.  

In the summer we use my beloved jadeite, but when fall comes it's time to pull out the brown and cream Royal Staffordshire "Charlotte" dishes. 

The story behind these dishes is that the summer before our wedding, I was poking around the local notoriously junky junk shop and found a box of these. They were so beautiful! I fell in love with their autumnal design.  But the junk shop owner is no fool and the dishes were far too expensive for me to purchase.  I went home and told my mom about them, about how beautiful they were, and then went on with my life.

Well!  My mother quietly went to the junk shop, did some investigative research, and bought the dishes for me. What a sweet, lovely gift!  My mother probably couldn't afford them much more than I could, but she wanted to surprise me, and she had a truly a generous spirit.  I was quite touched by it then, and even more so now, as the years pass and I have my own daughter who loves beautiful things. I pull these out when the chilly weather arrives and think about the woman who raised me, who wanted to do some extravagant (to us) act of kindness for me before I became a married woman. 

She died suddenly less than two years later, so these are a little treasure. 

I love them so much I designed a whole baby shower around them back in 2009!

And yes, I do use my "best dishes" all the time.  A couple of years ago I got rid of our "everyday" dishes (Pfaltzgraff plain white) entirely.  I didn't like them all that much, and I had several sets of antique or "fine" china sitting around that I rarely used, and it just made sense to make the switch. I did the same thing with my flatware--I sold my stainless steel stuff in a yard sale and now we use the Community White Orchid silverplated flatware that we inherited from my husband's grandmother. It has such a pretty, lustrous shine.  I dream of one day using sterling silver, because I love the weight of it in my hand, but we'll see.  Our children are fairly careful with the plates, and I'd rather suffer a few breaks over the years than never use what I love. I think since we started using the best dishes all the time, we've broken one thing...and I was the culprit.

I feel autumn has settled in around us now: the leaves are finally changing color, the air is crisp, my mums are fading, and the brown and cream china is on the table every day. I'm happy!