Vintage Fine China

Sometimes used, second hand, or hand me down items can be infinitely better than comparable new items.

On my parents’ recent trip back from working on sorting out my grandfather’s estate, they packed my grandparent’s wedding china in their carry on suitcases so I could have it. (My sister and my only other girl cousin are getting the sets from the great grandparents on that side of the family so no one is left out.)

It’s a beautiful set of Lenox Kingsley from the 1950s. 8 out of 12 full place settings remain and I will need a few replacement pieces eventually to bring the set back up to it’s original 12.

They did not have any serving pieces for this set. I checked Replacements, Ltd., my mother’s long time source of china, and found that the Lenox Kingsley serving pieces are in the $100-500 a piece range. Maybe someday I’ll be able to afford those prices but in the meantime I plan to supplement my set with cobalt Fiestaware which is classic, collectible, good quality, and comparatively cheap. I’ve also set up an RSS feed to notify me of any new listings for the pattern on Craigslist (once my parents scored 70 pieces of their china for $100 out of the newspaper’s classified ads so I’m hopeful a good price will come up eventually).

Along with the china I will be receiving my grandparent’s china cabinet that was built by my great-great-grandfather. There is also a set of crystal glassware that after some research it appears it may be the matching Lenox Kingsley crystal (my mom didn’t know she might be looking for a matching set so she’s not sure that’s what it is but what she did see fit the description). The china cabinet and crystal will be shipped out to me at a later time.

What you see in these pictures: China: Lenox Kinglsey, Flatware: Wallace Grand Ballroom (also from my grandfather, a relatively new 8 place settings set already missing pieces and not sold as open stock so I’ll probably get something else eventually), Crystal: Riedel from Target, Salt/pepper/butter: Fiestaware Cobalt

Featured in Festival of Frugality.
Shared in 2nd Time Around Tuesday, Beautiful Life Friday, Fashionable Friday, Finer Things Friday, Friday Foto Finish Fiesta, Frugal Friday @Life as Mom, Frugal Friday @The Shabby Nest, Hooked on Fridays, Show and Tell Friday, Tablescape Thursday, Vintage Thingies Thursday.

Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | learn more about subscribing