Saturday 17 July 2010

First Vintage China I Ever Bought







This little blue and white creamer is the first piece of vintage china I ever bought. It was in the Seventies and I was an art student in Manchester. I found the little jug (I didn't know it was a creamer then) in a junk shop near college, where (not very attractive) old furniture used to spill out onto the pavement. Sometimes they had records and paperback books we were interested in.


But one day I saw this little jug and bought it for few pence. It was roughly wrapped in a piece of the Manchester Evening News and I took it back to my room in the student house I shared with several others. There it joined the art materials, books, patchwork fabrics, records, clothes and general muddle I lived in at the time. It was the beginning of years of collecting vintage pieces - and I still have it with me today. It moved from flat to cottage and from house to house with me. In the Eighties I painted it for a book illustration, with cornflowers, buttercups and wild roses.






Today I've taken it out of the cupboard and filled it with a posy of clove-scented carnations or pinks, and a few other little garden flowers. It's a wonderful little bit of china for displaying posies and the memories it holds will always keep me especially fond of it.

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