My Fiesta Beginnings

I started my Fiesta collection in 1999.  I was on vacation in Saugatuck, MI, with a group of friends.  We were visiting a junk shop.  Please note, they claimed to have antiques, but for the most part, I would claim they had a lot of junk and newer items.  In this shop, I ran across a stack of Fiesta plates sitting on a table.  The sight of these plates instantly took me back to my paternal grandparent’s table when I was growing up. 

 

I was never very close to my father’s family.  Even though they lived the same distance from our house as my mother’s parents, emotionally, that distance was a lot further.  There were the few Thanksgiving dinners when the whole family would gather, but those had ended by the time I was 7 or 8.  And we would stop by their house each Christmas morning, but it would only be us visiting.  I rarely ever saw my aunts, uncles or cousins.  Even more strange, I grew up less than 10 minutes from one of my aunts and her three daughters.  I saw them even less than my grandparents. 

 

The one thing I always remember about my grandparents though was their table.  It was always set with Fiesta dishes.  Of course, when I was a small kid, I never knew (or really cared) about the dishes.  But now that I look back at those times, I fondly remember.  The colors I remember were Red, Yellow, Cobalt, Medium Green, Ivory and Turquoise.  I don’t recall any of the other 50’s colors or Original Green for that matter either.  I know my grandmother bought them when she was working at a local department store.  But I have no idea when she worked there.  She would be a few dishes at a time, as the budget allowed. 

 

Sadly, my grandmother passed away in 1995 and my grandfather was put into a nursing home in 1999.  When he went into the nursing home, all of his belongings were auctioned off.    This was the same time that I was really getting into collecting Fiesta.  But with the lack of communication in the family, I was never told of the auction until after it was over.  I would have gladly bought all of their Fiesta dishes.  The main prize would have been the Turquoise disk pitcher she used for every meal to pour her iced tea.  And for me, that one piece will always be the iconic piece of Fiesta.

 

And that stack of plates I saw in the junk shop, they came home with me.  At the time, I had no idea what they were other than the items that triggered my Fiesta obsession.  I thought they would make great dinner plates, but they turned out to be the 11” chop plates.  A bit too bulky and way too large for dinner plates.  The colors are Apricot, Rose, Periwinkle, Turquoise and Cobalt.  I think I used them once for eating, and realized they were too big.  They have been dust collectors ever since.  But they still remind me of my grandparent’s table and the beginning of my collection.