Thrifting Antique China for Afternoon Tea
I’ve always loved old things - I love the charm that historic places and items have - from houses to photos, and antique houseware items, I love it all! I’ve spent many an hour on realtor.com searching around the country for old houses (always making sure to set the search to a home age of 100 years or older!). Circa Old Houses is another incredible website for old houses that I am a frequent visitor of. I love seeing the different homes that are out there, and how everyone has chosen to decorate their spaces. Being that I am studying Historic Preservation for my Master’s degree, these activities are not surprising, and neither is the fact that one of my favorite things to do in my free time is to go thrifting. I could spend hours just poking around different thrift stores or flea markets. I know some people see a lot of these items as junk, but I think that if you know what to look for you can find some great treasures. One of my newest obsessions has become antique china. I love table settings and adore the old, unique china that you can find at thrift stores. I think that antique and eclectic china and table settings have been on trend recently, especially for weddings that use mismatched plates and bowls, along with colored crystal cups to create a whimsical garden-style table display. As I’ve been spending a lot of time planning my own wedding, I’ve seen a lot of beautiful photos on Pinterest of tables with the most gorgeous settings. I’ve drawn a lot of inspiration from those for my wedding (which I will be posting about soon!). So when I decided to just go take a look around a local thrift store, I was pleasantly surprised with the china and other dinnerware I was able to find.
Once I saw this set I fell in love, I think it has the most beautiful pattern that is simple but so elegant. After flipping a plate over to see what the brand was, I did some googling to see if it was a quality piece of china. Before this, I had no idea what to be looking for when thrifting for dinnerware, but after reading a few articles and blog posts I learned that (at least most of the time and in terms of resale value) you want to look for china from England or Germany. Of course, there are plenty of beautiful pieces made in other countries, but these pieces from Germany and England tend to be of very good quality. This is just some advice I found on the internet, so of course, you should do your own research on any pieces that you find. After doing my research, this looked like it was a quality set of dinnerware from Winterling, which is a German brand that was active in Bavaria from the early 1900s into the early 2000s. This pattern is called “Renaissance” and was made sometime between the 1950s and the 1980s.
Depending on what you plan to use the china for, or if you intend to resell it, you can do a quick search of the brand name to see how much it is worth. This helps to determine if buying these pieces is a good investment for you. If you intend to use them yourself, which I think is the most fun option so that you can enjoy your treasures, you should just buy pieces that you like! You will be the one enjoying them, so it should not matter if they have a high resale value.
If you are looking to buy to flip a profit, searching sold listings on eBay, or looking on replacements.com or Etsy can help you gauge whether or not the pieces are worth purchasing. If you are a seller on eBay, you can use the Terapeak product research feature in the seller hub. Terapeak shows you how much the item you are looking at has sold for. It also shows you when it was last sold by other sellers. This is a great way to see if there is interest in the item you are looking at, as well as to see if there are other sellers in the market that are offering the same product. If the market is oversaturated with that exact item trying to be sold, it may mean it is not as rare and therefore not as valuable. This does depend on the item, of course, and can vary depending on the quality of the pieces available. I believe that it is always worth a search because you never know how valuable an item might be!
When you have purchased a set of china (or even just a few pieces!) all that is left to do is use them! This is the best part, where you can bring these pieces back to life. Set the table and have yourself a nice dinner party, or maybe afternoon tea, as I did with mine.
I made a lemon poppy seed loaf for the occasion and threw together some little bites to go along with it. You can get as creative and intricate as you want, it is totally up to you! I find it so fun to make little finger foods. They’re so simple and can be anything you like. I put together some snacks using seed crackers topped with whipped cream cheese, a piece of bacon, and a sprig of green onion. The other bites are just some fig newtons that I cut to look fancier. It is so simple but creates such a fancy look for your afternoon tea. I hope this has inspired you to find your own china treasures and maybe even throw yourself a tea party too! You deserve it!
