Fiesta Ware by Homer Laughlin A personal story by contributing editor Gina Smith

I just can’t help of thinking of Fiesta ware around the 4^th of July. You see, July 1 my mother would have been 86, and the amazing Fiesta dinnerware she had received on her wedding in 1940 (yes, at the age of 18), was a big part of her life and mine.

      Introduced nearly 75 years ago by the Homer Laughlin Co of Newell, West VA (with an address on “Fiesta” drive), the brightly colored ironstone dinnerware was only about four years on the market when my mother picked it for her bridal registry at the Michael C. Fina China Co., in Anderson, IN.

      She likely received a lot of it, because it was considered very economical, even “cheap” dinnerware at the time. I don’t know if the colors came in “place settings” at that time or simply a la carte, but I do remember her telling me each piece was purchased new for cents- that is, like 25 cents for a coffee cup!

       I have no reason to doubt this was true, because my mother’s family was very poor, and a wedding was not exactly what they had in mind for her in 1940. Consumption was also cautious at best, because of the war years reminding people to save, re-use, etc. In fact, a 1943 McCall’s magazine I have instructed housewives how to get the longest life out of their bed sheets by mending them promptly when a tear was discovered.

      Such was the economic climate when my mother was a newlywed, and although I do not know how many pieces of this then-new dinnerware she received, I do know that my brothers, who were toddlers in the 1940s, were served on it three times a day, while my father was in the war in Germany.

      By the time I came along as an end-of-baby-boom surprise in 1960, she had amassed quite a collection of Fiesta but still did not view it as such. The kitchen cupboards were filled to the brim with tall stacks of dinner plates in every color imaginable. Beside them were equal stacks of luncheon plates, pie plates, saucers and even rarer divided dinner plates and the large steak plates.

      As the only daughter, I guess it is also no surprise I correctly learned the names of all these pieces as well as the proper names of the colors, such as cobalt, red, light green, chartreuse and more. In fact, even though Fiesta ware was rapidly dying out in the late 1960s as a common tableware “pattern” among brides, I can still remember as a child going with her downtown to the same China store she had always frequented and still seeing pieces of Fiesta on the shelves and on people’s bridal registries. I don’t remember if I ever got to register myself at that store as a young adult because I think that local franchise of the still-famous store went out of business in the late 1970s-early 1980s. Fiesta itself was pulled from production in 1973.

      By the time I came along, the famously-bright colors of Fiesta or what you and I would call yellow, orange, turquoise, navy and green, had been supplemented by “special collections.” The group I most remember included rose, chartreuse (lime-ish), off-white and gray- not exciting to me at all as a child, but very exciting to me today if I see it in an antiques shop, as I know it signifies “authentic” vintage Fiesta.

       In truth, most of the original key colors of Fiesta have never been reproduced with 100% accuracy, excepting maybe the cobalt. I don’t know if this is intentional on the part of Homer Laughlin Co., or not. Still, the similarities in many of the colors, such as turquoise and yellow, coupled with all the new colors and pieces they have introduced in the last 20 years, having gone back into production in 1986, has made it harder and harder for novices to collecting and the uninitiated (those who never supped on a 1940s red-which-is-really-orange dinner plate) to tell the difference between new, old and oldest.

      Thankfully, many collecting guides have been written on the subject and are very enjoyable just to look at as Fiesta remains likely the most colorful dinnerware ever made, although it was quickly imitated by Harlequin ware and even other lines within HLC. I had understood that HLC nearly went out of business in the economic downturn of the 1980s when newlyweds favored the indestructible Corelle by Corning Ware or even “TV dinners” in foil trays!

      However, today HLC remains the largest domestic pottery employing over 1100 skilled workers in a 37-acre facility, according to their Web site at www.hlchina.com. This site provides a wealth of history and information for collectors. It says Fiesta^® Dinnerware was designed by Frederick Hurten Rhead in 1936 and is now among 
the most collected china products in the world. It notes that Fiesta was reissued in 1986 with new, contemporary colors to mark its 50th anniversary. There are now 15 colors and 50 items in the lead-free collection. I imagine the few pieces of my mother’s that I still have probably have lead in them, hence the color differences.

      Besides the “pink and green” phase, another oh-so-appropriate group of colors came out in 1969, and featured what was called antique gold and turf green. Anyone picturing a kitchen of 1970 can just imagine how these complemented those avocado, gold and copper tone appliances!

      By the 1970s and 1980s, my mother and one of my brothers had become true “collectors” of vintage Fiesta, traveling around the Midwest to antiques shows (often in shopping malls), estate sales and even the ubiquitous flea market, to add to their collections. They unintentionally passed on to me the “snobbery” users and lovers of the “old” Fiesta had for the new, modern colors that were then coming out. We differentiated the “new” cobalt, calling it “that fake navy” or “repro blue.” Indeed, it is a true dichotomy that as much as they loved the line, the issuance of a multitude of new colors in 1986 was a disappointing and disinteresting blow for collecting.

      At the same time, I was a bit of a “snob” then about anything old (eeewww, yuck!) as a 20-year-old bride in 1980. I graduated from college with a B.A. in journalism and Spanish on a Friday and got married on Saturday. My registry was full of Fiesta’s nemeses- Corning Ware, Tupperware, Rubbermaid, Pyrex and Baker’s Secret- and all the other names that burst forth on the convenience scene in the 1980s.

      I did not have one piece of Fiesta to my name until nearly 1990, when the country decorating style (remember geese?) made its way into my home, and I decided a few choice pieces of my mother’s many dishes would look good on a quilt rack in my kitchen.

      The further tie-in to the 4^th of July comes to my mind here because my mother had so much Fiesta she was able to outfit both her house and her summer cottage with enough place settings and serving pieces for the extended family to picnic on the dishes over the long 4^th of July weekend (and without employing an automated dishwasher to keep up).

      Even though she had many rare and original pieces and even though she was by now well aware of the value of some, she never for an instant hesitated to let the youngest of grandchildren or great-grandchildren carry their 1940s dinner plate across the lake cottage’s concrete floor, the plate loaded as it was with hamburgers, hot dogs, corn on the cob, watermelon and the like. The family celebrations were as colorful in the 1980s and early 1990s as they had been in the 1960s-1970s. The thought of lead in the dishes had not yet become a concern in the media or at our table.

      I don’t remember if my nieces and nephews took the desire into the next generation, but one of my favorite things to do as a kid was to stack the Fiesta in the cupboard (and in the glorious Hoosier Kitchen cabinet at the lake house) to make multi-color stripes of all the same-size pieces. I am sure this is how my mother got me to dry dishes. I do not remember ever breaking a piece; thank goodness it was nearly indestructible, as the heavy ironstone it was.

      We most often set the table with no regard to color, just grabbing whatever plate, cup, saucer, tumbler, footed compote, olive dish, relish tray, mug or cereal bowl was on top of the stack. Occasionally, however, I would try to set the table with each piece of a place setting in all the same color. This was not the easiest to do; however, as those pieces that had been chipped or broken early on could not be replaced by the same color later, and again, my parents were too poor as newlyweds to replace anything when those colors were still being produced.

      Today, it is not surprising to find all manner of Fiesta in antiques shops and malls and flea markets, although it is pretty rare to find any cast off unknowingly at a garage sale. There is becoming less of a choice supply over time, but the voluminous issue from 1936 to 1973 and its easy access and low cost in the early years meant that there was a lot of it in homes in the 40s and 50s especially. What is surprising, to me anyway, is the price that a very chipped, cracked, crazed and otherwise bad-looking piece can bring, or at least be marked. My mother had been absolute in her belief that a chip meant the piece was worthless, useless, unappealing to look at and should be cast out to the curb immediately. She, my brother, and I never lost our “snobbery” about that, refusing to buy damaged vintage pieces-perhaps we were just remembering the “good, old days” when pristine Fiesta was plentiful.

      Even though I did not begin to “re”-appreciate Fiesta until about 1990, there are pictures of it in service at my high school graduation open house and at all events in between. But, in 1990 when I filled my two-tier oak shelf, I talked my mother out of some really good pieces, as only an only daughter can do.

            I had my favorite small pitcher in yellow, my favorite relish tray and salt and pepper in light green, a footed compote in yellow, and in the rarer red, a footed compote, luncheon plate and juice glass. I don’t think I ever talked her out of her demitasse set, mixing bowls, cake server, ash tray or egg cups.

                                  

       I did, however, get a valuable green pitcher and some other choice pieces. Unfortunately, all but the yellow pitcher and a small cereal or fruit bowl were lost when the shelf came crashing down several years later, after a re-painting of the kitchen.

            And although there were promises from those who loved me to replace the loss, the same pieces just could not be found, or if they could, not at a reasonable price. And, they’d never be my mother’s dishes anyway. When she died in 1998, the task of sorting through all her Fiesta fell to my brothers and me, along with my niece. My mother had sold some valuable pieces here and there, like a couple of multi-colored relish trays and more, to help her fund her widow’s existence. Now, I felt like I couldn’t and shouldn’t claim the Fiesta for my own, letting it to go to auction with the sale price added to her estate totals (which were meager) to benefit everyone. I cannot describe how much I regret not keeping some key pieces as it would not have mattered much anyway.

So when I hear fireworks over the lake and smell the grill on a 4^th of July weekend, I can’t help but think about how the colorful festivities were once enhanced all the more by the simplest of things, my mother’s old and colorful dinnerware.

- Guest Author, Gina Smith

{All contributed content Gina Smith © Lilly*s of London*ish}