Porcelain Madness

Welcome to Porcelain Madness, a decorative annex to The Mystic Tea Room.

Preparing for breakfast with a vintage creamer and 6" plate. Eggs over easy and an English muffin are on the menu and will be complemented by this yellow and white service. The creamer was manufactured by Medalta Potteries of Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, and is back-stamped with the date-code 52, for 1952. It advertises the Nanking Tavern, a beloved Chinese restaurant which was located at the corner of Elizabeth and Hager streets in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The plate is a mystery; it bears a conventional logo crest with a full-rigged sailing ship and the letters H MP H. The MP probably stands for a Scottish name, such as MacPherson or McPeak and the final H may possibly signify "Hotel" -- but precise identification has so far eluded me. In any case, the organization that used this crest was somewhere in the United States because the plate was made to order by Sterling China of East Liverpool, Ohio. The narrow rim and yellow / grey colourway give it a mid-century modern look and indeed its back-stamp date-code of A3 indicates that it was made in the year 1953.

Here's a beautiful 6-inch black-and-white desert plate made by Warwick for the Culbertson Hills Golf Course in Edinboro, Pennsylvania in 1930, the year it opened. The artwork and lettering are superb -- and the same uncredited artist also produced a gorgeous matching brochure for the country club. I love lettering, i love art deco line art, i love cumulus clouds in art (and these are amazing clouds!) ... but i don't love the Culbertson Hills Golf Course, which advertised that it was "open to the pubic under restrictions which the company imposes, of course" -- specifically, that membership was offered "only to Gentile people." In other words, no Jews were allowed -- and neither were African Americans. I have no idea if or when Culbertson Hills changed its racial and religious exclusion policies, but this beautiful plate remains a symbol of the finest commercial art of its time, in the service of the ugliest discrimination of its time.

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