My first introduction to Fiesta began when I was a small toddler growing up. My dad's parents used Fiesta for their everyday dishes. I do remember cobalt, yellow, ivory, red, turquoise, and green (original green or light green). I don't think there were any 50's colors, but I can picture medium green on the table. Whether or not medium green was actually there, that will never be known. I don't remember a lot of the serving pieces, just the basic place settings. But the one piece that she used all the time (even for Thanksgiving dinner when we used the good china) was her Turquoise Disk Pitcher. That pitcher was always full of Sweet Tea.
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That turquoise pitcher will always been the ONE piece of Fiesta that is in all of my memories of my grandparents. And the disk pitcher will always be the ONE stand out piece of Fiesta that sums up the whole meaning of Fiesta for me.
I was never close to my dad's family. Even though we lived 30 miles from my grandparents, we only saw them twice a year. Those 2 times were Thanksgiving and Christmas. Heck, my dad's sister (the one we did talk with) lived 8 miles away. The only time we talked to her was at funerals or my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary. I do remember a few summers that I spent a week at my grandparents house. So my introduction to Fiesta was just those few summer weeks and Christmas breakfasts (remember Thanksgiving was the fine china!)
Fast forward a few years (plus a decade). The year is 1999. My dad had died earlier in the year. I used some of the money had had left me and went on a vacation. I was in Saugatuck, MI at a little antique/junk store. Some friends of mine had wanted to stop there, so I agreed since it was raining out and there was nothing else to do. I am walking around and I came upon a stack of Fiesta plates. One of my friends uses Fiesta for his dishes and he pointed out that these were newer plates. I think the price was $6 a plate. Not knowing what I was getting into, I picked out 8 plates. I had just moved into a new place and thought new dishes were in order.
The colors were Apricot, Rose, Turquoise and Cobalt. Of course, at the time I had no idea what their names were. But I liked the plates. After looking at them, my friend told me they were "seconds". I had no idea what he was talking about, but I bought them anyways. I think I did get them to come down on the price a bit.
When I got home, I washed them and then I finally realized, these plates were not what I was wanting. First off, I am not a fan of Apricot or Rose. I did like the Cobalt and Turquoise though. I also only had the plates, nothing else to go with them. And lastly, they were TOO BIG! They are all 11 3/4" chop plates. Definitely not the best for actually using to eat off.
The next week, after letting my friend know that I wasn't happy with the plates, he told me I could buy the dishes brand new from a local store. He took me there one afternoon and I was in LOVE! This was 1999. The main color they had was CHARTREUSE! I was so in love with that color from the beginning. And the best part, Chartreuse was on clearance! I immediately bought 8 place settings of different colors (Cobalt, Juniper, Chartreuse, SeaMist, Turquoise, Periwinkle, Persimmon and Yellow). And I went back the next day and bought 2 more place settings of chartreuse. I also bought some serving pieces in various colors to match the place settings. And I went back a couple of days later so I could buy some more Chartreuse! Over the next month, I ended up buying all of the Chartreuse they had. They kept marking it down, and I kept buying. This was the beginning of my
Shortly after that, I found ebay. And even worse, I found Vintage Fiesta on ebay! So armed with the money my dad had left me, I quickly grew a small collection of both Vintage and Post86 Fiesta. Needless to say, those first 6 months of ebay, the post office carrier began to hate me!
Coming soon: Pictures of my collections!
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