Vintage American Dinnerware Part 1 - Taylor Smith & Taylor

Vintage American dinnerware is one of my favorite things! There are so many patterns, shapes, colors and decals to choose and these dishes can still be found at very reasonable prices. Full sets are easily found in almost any antique shop and replacement pieces are abundant in online shop inventories. My favorite era would have to be the dishes of the 1930's and 40's with the mid century modern pieces of the 50's and 60's running a very tight race for second place.

Companies like Taylor Smith & Taylor, Salem China Company, W. S. George and Paden City Pottery are just a few of the dinnerware makers operating during that time. TST's most popular line was Lu-Ray Pastels. These dishes were glazed with pink, blue, green, gray and yellow. LuRay was manufactured from the late 1930's into the early 1960's and some great shapes can be found like the Sharon pink covered casserole shown here. Pastel dinnerware can really brighten your table and it's really fun to mix the colors when using dinnerware patterns like Lu-Ray and Fiesta. Not to mention that you can mix some glassware patterns with it as well. We were working on Lu-Ray and Hazel Atlas Coral Ovide in the same day and they looked pretty nice together. Just for fun, here's a shot of them. Pretty cool right?

One of the great things about vintage American dinnerware is that you can change your pattern without too much expense if you're bored. We use a white china with a pretty robin's egg blue trim. It is unmarked but I find pieces on a regular basis at local garage sales. I always ask about maker and every seller over 60 years old has said it is Syracuse China bought from an outlet store that's been closed for longer than they can remember. I've never found the pattern name or even an assigned number like the big R site uses but I'll keep looking.

We'd love it if you'd comment and let us know which makers and patterns are your favorites, even if they are not vintage or American dinnerware. Do you use your dishes or are they for display only?

Happy Searching!