RSSConnection, Collection, Quest
Mar 24
Stetson china was produced in Lincoln, Ill., from the 1940s into the 1960s. It looks like Blue Ridge china, which creates the challenge for collectors. (Photo by Becca Martin)
I couldn’t help but like antiques, I guess.
I grew up in the same beautiful turn-of-the-century home that housed my Aunt Grace’s antique shop. She was willing, delighted even, to answer my questions about doll heads, silver dollars and Depression glass. When she had a yard sale to clear out inexpensive items, I was in charge of the cash box, tallying up each ticket on a cumbersome manual adding machine. And when I was very, very good, I got to play with her collection of miniatures, a cabinet that included dozens of things from a cast-iron stove — a salesman’s sample that was perfectly sized for a child — to “penny dolls” that were no bigger than my child-sized thumb.
Most of her antiques were auctioned off when my aunt passed away, so I didn’t get to expand on any of her collections. Instead, I stole an idea from my best friend.
Pam collects Stetson china because her great-grandmother, Catherine Plunket, was an artist at the Illinois plant where it was produced and painted by hand. That’s the family connection.
The challenge is that the Stetson China Co., founded in 1946 in Lincoln, Ill., hired artists who had worked for the much better known Southern Potteries company in Tennessee. So Southern Potteries’ Blue Ridge china patterns are, obviously, similar — and neither company marked all of its pieces.
I started with just a piece or two of Stetson, a dogwood pattern chosen because I love dogwood. I mean, how much room could a few dessert plates and a teacup or two take up?
Then I found my first sugar bowl, distinctive because of the flower-shaped handle on the lid. It too was dogwood — but the next one wasn’t. Neither was the one after that. Then I bought a platter … and a stack of plates … and a creamer (or two) and a serving bowl (or six).
Now Stetson china fills most of one kitchen cabinet and the wooden display rack where I show off the serving bowls. Sugar bowls and creamers fill a shelf of my grandmother’s secretary. Platters are hung on the wall above my dressing table.
The joy is in the discovery: Picking up a pattern I don’t recognize and finding out it really is Stetson. Flea marketing with Pam and being the first to see a piece of Stetson down the aisle. Finding another sugar bowl (my favorite thing). Or discovering something neither one of us has seen before.
A couple of weekends ago, I found a bowl with a sort of quilted band around the edge, something new to Pam. And then the day got even better. Tucked up in the corner of a flea market shelf, I saw a teapot, attached to its trivet with yellowed adhesive tape. I didn’t recognize the flower pattern, but I knew that flower-shaped handle on the lid! It’s Stetson because it’s marked. It’s rare because Pam didn’t even know the company had made teapots. And it expands the quest, because the company might have made salt and pepper shakers, too!
Stetson has no real monetary value. I just bought a dessert plate at a thrift store for a dollar. The value is in the collection, the connection and the quest.