Ironstone, bitches.

As you all know, I am a girl of color. That came out weirdly inappropriate, but you know what I mean. While I appreciate white in design, I am more partial to pops of color and even saturated color. I feel more comfortable with color. Otherwise, it seems like you’re living in a mental institute, which I very well may be a candidate for. I have even completely black lacquered my bedroom walls before in Santa Barbara. After I finished, I crawled into my bed, and thought, “Ahh, peace.” So, I would never ever dress a dinner table with solid white plates (unless they had a colorful trim or gold trim). White plates are boring and borderline psychotic. However, I am also a girl of great contradictions and I love ironstone. Pure milky white antique ironstone. How could you not?

 

 

My love of ironstone has its origins at my grandmother’s house. You may be wondering why I talk about my grandmother all the time. It’s because she was a huge part of my life and very influential to my style. My siblings and I with my mother actually even lived at my grandparent’s house for a while because my parents got a divorce…but didn’t tell us. Our questions of, “Why are we living at grandma’s?” were left unanswered. They got remarried later so they never thought it was it was of any importance to mention it to their own children. But the good news is that we lived in ignorant bliss at my grandmother’s big fat house and had cucumber sandwiches and iced tea every day in the “downstairs screened in porch.” (She also had an “upstairs screened in porch” where all the grandchildren slept in the summertime in little twin beds covered in her handmade quilts. There were big steamer trunks at the end of each bed and we played make-believe that we were on the Queen Mary traveling overseas.) My grandmother’s housekeeper, Parthenia, would serve us our cucumber sandwiches on white bread with the crust cut off on Red Cliff ironstone plates. It was my grandmother’s everyday china. Around the edges was a raised grape and leaf pattern. They were thick and heavy and nearly indestructible… Such is the case with all ironstone.

 

There is a time and place for everything and I think ironstone has its place in certain households. Hamptons house, Carmel beach house, wintery Maine shingled cottage, French farmhouse… all  are conducive to ironstone but I think it would look ridiculous if you used ironstone in a modern Parisian pied-à-terre, or anywhere in downtown Hong Kong. :-) Just doesn’t work. I also think that ironstone works best as a collection. Additionally, it’s really important (Is this starting to sound like The World According to Ellie? Pardonnez-moi, if it is.) to NOT use ironstone with “shabby chic” (shoddy chic, according to me). That would just be too contrived and obvious. Remember, good design is about a slight juxtaposition. I think I just contradicted myself again. What I mean is that you need to mix your crap with the good stuff but subtly and in the right context. It’s called originality… Look it up. :-) Do I sound drunk today?

 

So what do you all think about ironstone? Any flea market has ironstone and it’s also available on eBay. There is a little Martha Stewart ironstone video tutorial HERE.

 

 

I have two more days, no, three more days of my ramblings about dishes and then I will “fermer la bouche.” Stay tuned for tomorrow’s dishes. Hint: “swirl.”

A toute!