Vintage Tea Plates

I recently enjoyed reading Jane's post on her blog about her collection of vintage china mugs. She takes great joy from finding them at car boot sales and using them everyday. I can relate to this as I also love vintage china and have a 'thing' for small transfer printed tea plates!

I loved it when the girls were younger; they would rush in from a day at school to select the tea plate that they wanted to have their after school snack served on.....

We had a few breakages along the way, but that really didn't matter. The beauty of a mismatched 'set' is that you can add pieces as and when you find them and if you love the design they are sure to sit well with others in your collection.

They can be sourced from many different places quite easily; Car boot sales, charity shops, flea markets, antique fairs and websites are all great hunting grounds.

Having so many tea plates recently led to an embarrassing moment for me. Clare and her husband Mike came for lunch, so of course the vintage china needed to come out! I opened the cupboard door and as I did so.....

...the stack of plates came sliding out of the cupboard and went skimming across the kitchen floor with quite a crash!

Surprisingly none of them broke this time! My husband jokingly remarked that that will teach me for having a tea plate for every day of the year! Mmmm...blush!

So I have since added some to the shelves here, so the pile in the cupboard isn't quite so precarious!

My favourites!