Mom’s China

“I can’t find the rest of these crystal glasses,” KK says, lying on the kitchen floor, one arm buried deep in a cabinet. There are rattling noises, and she keeps shining her phone’s flashlight deep into the Underworld of our kitchenware. “This is all the Rosenthal stuff.”

My mom received a set of Rosenthal china as a wedding present. When she died in 1997, I ended up with it. Most of it I stored, but I kept a platter out among our other fancy buffet dishes. A few holidays ago, when it was pulled out for use, the platter cracked neatly in half, which has made me loathe to use any other pieces.

As we were making Thanksgiving turkey and trimmings this year, pulling out the special bowl to mix stuffing and another bowl to sport cranberries, I realized that there’s a big gap between what I would use for a dinner party and what my mom would use. Not that strange these days, of course, my kids would say, “dinner party, WTF?” But the idea of hauling out a single set of matching delicate dishes for a meal seems bizarre, even on a special holiday with people you care about.

There is a history for things like Rosenthal china, a company history and a personal history. These things intersect and create waves of overlapping interference, like in a pond. This may explain why we have such a patchwork quilt of dishes when we serve dinner, all of which are precious.

The Blur of the Fifties

My parents received the china as a wedding present in 1952, used it for a few years, then boxed it up when they went gallivanting off to Germany. Not exactly gallivanting, I suppose I should say. My dad was drafted as soon as he graduated from college–“as soon as he got his diploma, they got ’em” my mom would say. Being college educated, I think the army had him doing a lot of administrative work. My mom apparently taught English to the GIs. They didn’t have much money before that, during that, or after that, so they could never have afforded fancy china. Most of the pictures I have of them in Europe is at restaurants, wearing costumes, or clearly drinking a lot.

Until I thought about it this week, I had assumed my mom acquired the china when she was in Germany with my dad. (Funny how dad never enters into the discussion of china; it was never his, even if it was a gift for their wedding.) Dates and sequences are muddled in my head, in that way that everything which happens before you are born is smeared together into single decades, and everything that happens after is terribly important to get right.

For a long time, I thought my dad was drafted during the Korean war, and “lucked out” to be sent to Germany. But he was actually drafted in 1957. Therefore, my parents must have had this china when they were living in a tiny apartment in Detroit, after marrying in April 1952. I wonder if my mother knew the company’s history, though she probably did; she knew that kind of thing, even way before the Internet.

Nazis, Abolitionists, and Mergers

The Rosenthal factory in Selb is in southeastern Germany, on the border with Czechia. Philipp Rosenthal, the founder, was advancing the company forward as a pinnacle of German quality manufacturing in the 1930s, when the Nazis came to power. Although Rosenthal was Catholic, one of his ancestor-somebodies had been Jewish, which made him “full-Jew” according to the third Reich. He was forced to resign, replaced with “Aryan” management, and the company “produced” china during the war under the Rosenthal name, though it was not really Rosenthal manufacture, no matter what Goebbels said.

Somebody ran the factory at the end of WWII because Rosenthal dishes which were made between 1946 and 1949 are stamped “U.S. Zone” on the back, which earns some special antique designation. Philip Rosenthal returned from exile in 1950. Grandpa Philippe had passed away in 1937, waiting for the Nazis to be ousted. Grandson Philip came back and re-energized production, added factories, collaborated with famous designers like Walter Gropius of the Bauhaus School, and generally re-established the quality of Rosenthal products. That was the run apparently that my parents acquired.

Mostly, I remember that the Rosenthal was displayed in a china cabinet–get the dishes, then get furniture to display the dishes–in the dining room. (And have a room where you eat on the dishes.) When you stepped from our kitchen into the dining room, it was carpet over wood floor. So the dishes always rattled. The dining room is where my parents also had the hi-fi, so I would dance around to the Jackson Five in 1971, and the dishes would rattle.

Industrial manufacturing has always tried to portray itself as emotionless and systematic, but companies always have a human side. Ireland’s Waterford crystal opened, closed, and re-opened between 1783 and 1947, employing techniques of Irish glass-making merged with modern Czech design.The Waterford fortunes rose and fell with the choices of the owners, even if today, Waterford chandeliers grace Westminster Abbey and the Kennedy Center.

Then, there was Josiah Wedgwood, who pioneered both a method for transferring designs to dishes and a style of “jasperware” that used silhouettes on the plates and bowls, which hearkened back to ancient Greece. Wedgwood happened also to be an abolitionist and used his position to advocate for anti-slavery legislation in Britain. Emancipation was enacted in 1807, perhaps partly influenced by Wedgwood’s mass-produced medallion, “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?”

The Waterford and Wedgwood companies ran into financial concerns in the 1980s, after the worldwide virus of mergers and acquisitions swept through the manufacturing of pottery, as it had elsewhere. Waterford-Wedgwood continued to sell dishes, and bought Rosenthal in 1997.

Here Be Dragons

“I know I had more glasses than this.” KK sets out four wine glasses and three smaller (?aperitif?) glasses on the counter. We search together, as I often find things other people can’t, it’s a super power. We flip through all the upper cabinets, with their light bulbs, unused mandolins, Christmas-themed plates, and–oh, gosh! more Rosenthal–but the rest of the crystal eludes us.

KK returns once more to the bottom cabinets. “Here Be Dragons,” she mutters, rattling the piece of cardboard that separates the fine china from the everyday frying pans. I thought she meant we wrote that on the cardboard, but we did not. She was just being funny.

Crystal is a type of lead glass in which lead replaces the calcium in the potash. It’s called “crystal” even though it’s not a crystalline structure. A crystalline solid–and I’m over my pretty little condensed matter head with this–but it’s an organized structure. Glass is not organized in the same way, known as an amorphous solid, which means it can be transparent because it doesn’t scatter light the same way as a “crystalline solid.” So glass can’t be crystalline, even though it’s crystal.

The specific valuable aspect of lead glass … and let’s face it, they call it “crystal” because people are uncomfortable with any kind of lead in their dishes, even if it is there… is that it has a clear ringing tone. When they first created lead glass in the U.K. in the 17th century, the ring tones were so vibrant, “rich bell tones between F and G sharp,” they were distinct and recognizable. The Industrial Revolution guys enjoyed eating on fine china dinner plates and banging their glass together to populate their club dining rooms with music. And cigar smoke, I presume.

One researcher did a study that showed lead crystal had potassium ions that were bound more tightly than soda-lime glass, so that striking the glass caused more oscillation. That’s more science than I understand at the moment, but suffice it to say the reason for the ringing tone is its physical properties. And oscillation is always involved with sound waves.

KK acquired her glasses through Princess House, the Tupperware of the 1980s. Direct sales, it’s called, meaning people–women–had parties in their homes to sell the merchandise. KK says one lady would have a party, get some free stuff along with selling a few, then another lady would take a turn. They all took turns, buying, and getting free stuff. KK’s mom went to the parties and bought stuff for her daughter, for the “hope chest.” When KK turned out to be a lesbian, don’t know if that mucked up the works. I don’t think Princess House built that model.

So two of us ended up with sets of dishes. Then KK bought some nice Noritaki stoneware. The pattern is called Sorcerer. I think I was involved in the “choice,” if by involvement you mean Do you like this? I guess so. OK, I’m getting it. So, we had three sets of dishes. And all of them were really too fancy to use, especially when we had kids, who can barely be prevented from running knives along the counter edge to see what happens. Or jumping around near the china cabinet.

But the idea of the Hope Chest, putting away the things you might need for marriage, or the acquisition of dishware for a young married couple, is a tradition that goes way back. It would be a particular WASP-y / Feminine Mystique / American Dream tradition, if you will, from the ’50s through the ’90s. You need to have matching dishes! You need a charger! (that’s a plate that goes under plates). You need a gravy boat!

What you need in your dishware, actually, is memories. (And a gravy boat.)

Living the Patchwork Quilt American Dream

We like to make turkey &c., and we like to follow a specific process. Brine the turkey, saute the vegetables that go in the stuffing, make cranberries and desserts Wednesday night etc. I have a flowchart which regular readers have seen before, but, if you haven’t, it’s here. Have it handy for next year, or make your own!

The brine is cooked in a pot, which is now only used for salty, garlicky mixtures, but we make those, too. The turkey and brine goes into the blue ice chest with the handle, and it sits in a specific spot in the garage. Stuffing is made in the big plastic bowl–sometimes we mix salad in it, but the two of us don’t usually at that much salad. We stuff the neck, then skewer it with a particular metal skewer. We know which skewer because it’s, well, fairly obvious.

My mom made gravy in the roasting pan, but that scratches the hell out of it, so I have a pot for making gravy, and I stir with a specific whisk. We rest the turkey on a battered cookie sheet, and I carve with a serrated knife. I received an electric knife as a present, but it scares me. I don’t like electricity moving things that cut.

KK’s mom down-sized last year, so we have tons more dishes acquired from who knows where. KK served the green beans on a clear tart plate that didn’t go into the official storage, waiting for an estate sale. They did look nice.

For me, the other key is serving with these curved, German-style forks and spoons, which I always thought were Rosenthal, but clearly were not. That spoon is also perfect for pouring pancakes; you can bury me with that spoon.

Cranberries look nice, so I use an old ice bucket that my parents had. They did throw plenty of parties, and ice in a bowl was always needed for alcoholic drinks of some sort in the ’60s. My parents drank martinis–does that take ice? I don’t drink alcohol, and my good friends who do bring their special cocktail shaker. Though we now have some decent glasses to pour the drinks in.

“I have something to show you.” I beckon KK into the garage. I have just bounced in from an early-morning hike, and she is still drinking her coffee, a little bleary-eyed. But she comes, squeezing between the car and the shelf. “Lookie!” The container is padded, with special sections inside for dishes separate from glasses. It’s clearly labeled: FRAGILE CRYSTAL. “Ah-ha!” KK says. “I knew it was somewhere.”

I had bought the special crystal holder as a Christmas present years earlier. Because with all this dishware, you now need to buy special containers to pack it in. Which is why The Container Store does such brisk business.

Waterford-Wedgwood Rosenthal ran into financial problems in the 2000s. Too many mergers, pressure from the non-family owners, export difficulties, competition from China china, plus the Great Recession. They divested Rosenthal and sold it to an Italian company, Sambonet Paderno Industrie of the Arcturus Group. A few years later, Waterford-Wedgwood was purchased by a New York private equity company that shoved it into a bigger conglomerate, along with Royal Doulton and Royal Albert dinnerware companies, which had also gone belly up. In 2015, Fiskars of Finland bought the WWRD holdings. Since my mother was a proud Finn, this makes me quite happy.

Noritake is still going strong. Though we use the Sorcerer stoneware for our “fancy” dinner parties, I use the bowls every day for oatmeal.