Old and New

When I took little Zerlina to Norwich Castle museum the other day, my pot of tea, cup and saucer were in an attractive china seemingly inspired by an antique Lowestoft pattern, named after Robert Browne. Here it is –
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My parents having been hoteliers, it took my mother many years to drop the habit of turning over the china in every restaurant she went to, to check the maker, and I still do it occasionally myself.  I was surprised this time, though.  Sorry the picture is on its side, but it says

‘Hotel Grade Porcelain, Australian Fine China, The Tabletop Professionals, made in UAE, 0031’ and the picture is a black swan, which is Australian, of course.  I’m assuming that someone saw the china and thought how like the Lowestoft pattern it was, but it still puzzles me that the china was made in the United Arab Emirates but named Australian, and that it ended up in Norwich.

It’s of no consequence, I just thought I’d mention it.

I’d like to put up pictures more often, but the website really doesn’t much like uploading them and it’s stuck on the third one, which is a piece of the original china.  I’m thinking I might use my old Blogger blog for that and put a link – no need for anyone to click through, of course, unless they wanted to.  Ronan can tweak the website – he explained the problem, it’s to do with automatically backing up, as far as i remember, and he can deal with it but it will recur – however, I don’t like to keep bothering him.  At present, I mostly put pictures on Facebook, though I often then delete them from my phone, they’re not worth cluttering up my computer.

Young Stevo and a friend of his came over to shift logs for me today – they chopped them first and I have another big pile down near the garages.  I don’t particularly want them there, but I can’t think of a better place if I want them on hard ground rather than on grass.  I daresay we’ll burn a fair few, as we say in  Norfolk, before the winter is over.  I’ve suggested to Weeza that she come over and fill the van for their wood burner.  They have underfloor central heating but, nice as it is, they were alarmed by how quickly it burnt the first tank of oil last winter and they moderate its use as it’s so expensive.  The woodburner is fantastic, it heats their huge room very quickly.  And a real fire is such a pleasure, of course.  I’ve been very warm this winter because I’ve lit the fire in the morning and kept it going all day, the room doesn’t get cold during the night and, though I’ve had my storage heater on for the last couple of months, it’s been kept fairly low and I turned it down lower still yesterday.

Hah! – I sneaked up on the image uploader and I’ve got it! You see the similarity?  The piece below would have been made in the 1770s and handpainted.

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5 comments on “Old and New

  1. Dinahmow

    A mystery! Could be a plot for something…mysterious?
    Black Swan is West Australia’s emblem(though the swans are widespread) But , being blue-and-white, I’d be happy to have some. Most of our china is willow pattern-ish.

    Reply
  2. sablonneuse

    Oof it’s not easy to find time to read or write posts but I’ve made it to your blog today.

    Wood fires are welcoming and cosy aren’t they? We’ve just had a delivery of logs as we were nearly out. It’s not easy to find dry wood now after the recent cold snap.

    You’re certanly keeping busy. Hope you find time to rest soemtimes!

    Reply
  3. Z Post author

    I’m not sure if you looked at our Lowestoft when you were here, Di. A lot of the blue and white was copied from Chinese patterns. The Lowestoft Willow Pattern is a rather dark transfer print and not one of the most appealing,but many of them are very attractive.

    I rest when I need to, thank you, Sandy, but it’s satisfying to get things done. I am going through an awful lot of wood, but then I want to use it and I want to be comfortable. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll only have one or two more winters here and it’ll see us through that.

    Oh Rog, it’s so easily done, isn’t it? I’ll try not to ask you the time when you have a glass in your hand.

    Reply
  4. Beryl Ament

    Well, good luck getting your photographs to work in Blogger. I can’t manage the getting the text to flow gracefully around the photographs. Almost as difficult as understanding the log in process in WordPress.

    Reply

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