I'm taking a short break from my latest Look for Less adventure (menswear designer Joseph Abboud's pied-a-terre living room -- absolutely awesome!) while getting ready for a neighborhood rummage sale that will be held September 12 - 14. In previous years I have not participated, figuring I didn't have enough stuff and/or interesting stuff.
On a whim I emailed one of my friends last weekend, who has a sister who does rummage sales on a regular basis, and asked if they would be interested in participating. To my shock, they said yes, they would! So, they're coming over the evening of September 12 after I get home from work and we'll set up some things in my garage and get ready to stage the rest out on the driveway early Friday morning, September 13. Yes, Friday the 13th, bwwwwwaaaahhhhaaaaa! Actually, the 13th is usually an auspicious day because 13 is the number of the Goddess. Friday falling on the 13th was given a really bad rap by the early christian church fathers who were fighting a losing battle against the forces of paganism, until they finally relented and turned Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, into a form of the ancient Mother Goddess (complete with eternal virginity) about the time of the "Holy" (cough cough) Roman Emperpor, Constantine, and everyone lived more or less happily after ever, but only after hundreds of years of massacres and such with lots of killing of innocent women and children, all in the name of the patriarchal god. And then a new patriarchal god arose out of the desert sands and the fighting started all over again. But that's another story. Meanwhile, us ladies are hoping we'll all sell lots of stuff make some money to buy new stuff, har :)
Getting ready for the sale is - lots of work. Geez!
I started cleaning out the kitchen last night (I was shocked at how many items I found to offer up for sale, wow!) I came across an old plate that was in my first house, bought in 1986:
It was stashed in one of the kitchen cabinets and I saved it, sentimental lady that I am. I just could not bring myself to throw it out. It isn't much to look at; it has a large chip, the finish is worn off some of the rim, there is a rusty haze underneath the glaze, the glaze is crazed (LOL!) - crackled might be a better description, the darker blue glaze isn't equally centered around the plate perimeter and thus the floral design isn't centered in the lighter blue-white area of the plate! The plate has been stashed away for years. I pulled it out last night as I was going through my cabinets, not intending to offer it up for sale, and probably for the first time since I found it in 1986, I took a look at the back, curious to see if there was a mark on it or not. I didn't expect to find one.
But there is a mark. It's a crown with a little tiny cross centered above it, and some lettering and possibly numbers under the base of the crown, but it is blurred and even with my Walgreens magnifying readers on I cannot make out the lettering/numbers, other than what looks like a C and possibly a period after the C. The next letter could be an R or a P, and there are two more symbols after the R or P, but honestly, they could be either numbers or letters. The even smaller symbols underneath this first row are impossible for me to make out at all.
I tried taking several different photos of the mark, but none of them has come out clearly -- not that the symbol itself is clear. It's not a spikey or pointy tipped crown, the crests are rounded, and there are four of them, with the little cross centered above the dip between the two center crests.
I tried taking a close-up and it didn't work. The photo above is the 'best' of the many I took, and it's not good at all.
One thing I've been thinking about since last night-- those maple leaves. At least, I think they are maple leaves. Maple leaves are a national symbol of Canada, right? And since the quality of the plate is poor, it screams "souvenir" to me. So I'm wondering if it was a plate that was picked up during a trip to Canada, and of course my imagination totally ran away with me. What if this is a plate that she (for I do not think it would have been "he" buying a plate!) bought when she visited Canada to see Queen Elizabeth when the royals first visited there in the 1950's? I've seen specials on the British royal family on PBS and one of the shows was all about the first visit to Canada -- it was a really big deal back then. Okay, maybe the plate isn't from such an event :)
Anyway, can either of my two readers out there help me out? Any suggestions how to try and track down this mark? I spent some time last night (late) in the internet and there are literally hundreds, maybe even thousands, of different crown marks for dishware/china. I didn't see anything like this, but I wasn't going to sit up all night looking for it, either!
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