September 14, 2011 "White Wednesday"

Happy "White Wednesday!" Now that I'm blogging I think I will be anticipating Wednesdays almost as much as the weekends! I have tons of shabby-white vintage items to blog about. I didn't really get a chance to put something special together this week, but I was just getting ready to add these pictures of some of my ironstone pieces to my Fabulous Fall post anyway so I thought I would just go ahead and use them for White Wednesday instead. 

Part of my vintage Adams ironstone collection, another one of my junkaholic addictions

You have to just love the simple elegance of white dishes. They are suitable for everyday use but are also unparalleled when it comes to formality in dining and can take on so many different looks depending on how you dress up or down your table.

What a find! Vintage Adams Ironstone including
the creamer and sugar bowl which
are valued around $90 alone. I grabbed 41 pieces of this
collection for only $7.

I have been collecting ironstone for a while and I'm a sucker for white dishes or pottery of any kind (or any white/ivory vintage items for that matter) so when I found 41 pieces of a highly collectible vintage Adams ironstone set at a consignment shop for $7.00, I was a just a wee bit ecstatic! 

ADAMS POTTERY

The Adams family have been operating potteries in Staffordshire, England, since the 1650s and possibly earlier. Although now owned by the famous Wedgwood group the factories still exist and are still being run by members of the Adams family. Now the twelfth and thirteenth generations traceable back in a direct line to the seventeenth century pottery of Robert and John Adams.

Family records show that there were 'Adams' classed as master potters in the area as far back as 1448.

This stamp on the bottom
of my dishes dates my collection from the mid 1960's.
(Love my retro-kitchen finds)! Adams ironstone has been around
since 1657 and there are tons of different
identification markings.  

Part of my love of collecting junk is the nostalgia and history of the junk itself. The first thing I do when I find treasures is research what I have actually found. I purchase a lot of flea-market and second-hand items purely on instinct and take my chances. Oftentimes I don't know for sure that what I have found is "worth" something (its always worth something to me if I love it regardless of the monetary value), but I still somehow seem to know I have found something special and it usually turns out my instincts have been correct.

I chose to display this collection on a sleek black table (a handmade 

Christmas gift from my husband in 2006) to keep a clean, classic look. 

The colors of the fall leaves seem even more brilliant

 against the black and white.  

The chalkboard hanging above was salvaged out of a Red Lobster restaurant when they were updating their decor. My husband and I purchased two of them from a flea market vendor for $25... our "Fresh Catch!" We kept this one and sold the other chalkboard 

on consignment for $50 (not a bad deal for us).

I happened to also find these three unmarked ironstone
canisters at a flea-market for $3
 and they fit in nicely with the Adams set

I enjoyed finding out a bit about the Adams Pottery and now I am on the lookout for more pieces.  I am sure you will see much more of my ironstone collection appearing all through my posts and in future White Wednesday displays. Now I have an excuse to buy more since I need them for my blog!