I had a “hope chest” that quickly filled, and the stuff was moved into boxes in the attic. When I moved out, I was set!
Damn, dude.
I pretty much could have written the OP myself. Married almost 20 years, have an absolutely beautiful set of designer, gold bordered china displayed in the formal dining room and I really don’t remember ever using it a single time. Hell, we don’t even eat in that formal dining room. I’ve asked why not and pretty much have the same round discussions as mention before.
I guess fine china is like the holy grail in someone’s castle… Oh yes, it’s very nice.
Thanks. All my nice stories are about my wife (or my kids). All the asshole stories are about me!
Regards,
Shodan
I inherited the non-fine Mikasa china my mom and dad got as a wedding present in 1956. Also their Reed & Barton silverware, and cut colored crystal wineglasses from Germany.
I use them for holiday dinners but nothing else. The china is not very substantial and would chip easily, and I wouldn’t use the silver or the glasses unless I was using the china.
But they are beautiful, and with the different colors of the glasses, they make a wonderful setting for Christmas dinner.
They are also touchstones for me to my past. So I have the desire to use them, but also the desire to protect them.
We have Spode that we use every day, because why the hell not. The biggest “housebreaking” issue I went through with my husband, when he moved in with me, was convincing him to drink his whiskey out of the damn crystal, because that’s what it’s there for.
There is one set of dishes I only haul out for Christmas . . . but that’s because it has metallic accents and has to be hand-washed. A pain in the butt I can handle only once a year.
Yup!:smack:
My wife is of pure Italian blood. I guess I should consider myself lucky that all our furniture isn’t wrapped in plastic like the chairs /couch in her grandmother and aunts homes.
Our family had a set of “nice” china, but they got used fairly often. There were always people over for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, etc., not to mention visiting aunts, uncles, cousins and so on. The thing that got rarely used was the “good” silverware - the real sterling silver stuff. That only came out at Thanksgiving. Not that I complained, since I was the one usually dragooned into polishing the bloody stuff.
Now the wife and I have TWO sets of sterling flatware - Mom’s and the set she gave us as a wedding present. One of these days we really need to throw a party and use the stuff. As is, they’ve been sitting in a storage unit for decade.
Very similar story here. My mother carefully divided the good china between my sib and me. Sib-in-law gave me that half back. We use the good china once or twice a year. We’ve never used the silverware. No crystal survives. I’m not sure where the wine glasses are.
I have a set of 1830 Limoges for 16, a small chest of sterling silver flatware [also for 16, same wedding] and crystal wine goblets, water goblets and cordial glasses, also 1830 marriage between my great to the whatever grandfather - he imported them as a wedding present to his new wife. I also have a set of 1760s silver - made by Wiltberger that the new wife brought along as part of her dower goods. When I was growing up they got used for Christmas and the occasional formal party. I have them stashed at my Mom’s house, she has the fine arts/antique insurance policy I can’t afford right now. When we do bring them home, we plan on still using them for really festive occasions. We always knew that they were going to be mine, my brother got the next batch of fancy goods from an 1850s wedding. He plans on selling them, he has absolutely no interest in them whatsoever. I really don’t blame him, not everybody values expensive delicate goodies. He is more of a beer and wings guy anyway=)
I have good china (but no silver or crystal).
My in-laws have a formal living room, and my parents used to when they lived in a bigger house. I don’t, but my house doesn’t have the space for a living room and a family room.
I’m sure my in-laws and parents have good china somewhere, but rarely use it when I’m around. The “china” that is the actual touchstone to my past is some Snowflake Blue Corelle that my mom’s parents had. That pattern debuted in 1970, so they must have gotten it sometime after Mom was grown up. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a place of my own when my grandmother passed away, so I did not get the Corelle, and I doubt it’s still in the family. I would be happy to be proven wrong on the latter point.
My good china is blue and white, partly because of Grandma’s Corelle, and partly because I like Ming blue and white porcelain. I really should use it more often than I do (it doesn’t have gold or silver on it, so it can go in the dishwasher and microwave), but that won’t happen until there are no longer little people in the house who like to express their opinion of food by throwing the plate off the table. I’ve got a 2.5 year old and am almost 25 weeks pregnant, so that will be a while.
I think the china exists so the china cabinet has something in it. At least my grandma’s did. It was a big fancy ass ornate thing with drawers and the top half glass to display the plates you never use. It took up half the tiny dining room because everybody was afraid to go anywhere near it lest they smudge(or god forbid scratch it) so we always scrunched way on the other side of the room.
When she died it was moved and set up the exact same way in our small dining room with the same issue. Last I visited my parents after their last move it was in the new dining room. But do to fear of earthquakes the display part has been upgraded to more secure racks.
I told my sister the cabinet of unusable dishes will sit clogging up her dining room next, but she said she has already been forced to commit to stewardship of her MILs china since her husband is an only child, and suggested I should get stuck with the damn thing.
I thought this was going to be What’s Your Favorite.
Anyway…I have some really good china, white bone china with gold edging. I use it, but rarely, for the simple reason that it shouldn’t go in the dishwasher, and I am not much into hand-washing dishes.
As to silver, my mother suggested I use it always, because then I wouldn’t have to polish it. But I don’t really like it because I think it makes the food taste like my flute. (I am kind of neurotic about food anyway.) A couple of pieces, such as the pie server, get trotted out when we have pie, and otherwise they are kept sealed in plastic so they don’t have to be polished.
There were people in my family who had china-cabinet china they didn’t use, and other stuff they used. They were the same people who had decorative soap in the bathrooms and ribbon-edged towels that quite obviously were too good for anyone to use ever. I rejected all that.
I do have one family member who has ribbon-edged towels in her guest bathroom, and if that’s not enough of a Do-Not-Use sign she has another ribbon artfully tied around them with a bow. I think that’s really bad taste but I’m saying it here, not to her face.
At one time I did have a dining room with a built-in china cabinet, and I put pretty stuff in there, and I didn’t use it because it was an arrangement, and to use it would have meant rearranging, and I didn’t want to rearrange all the time. It was like a dining room shrine of some sort. I finally realized that it was just taking up space and catching dust.
A Herd of Hookers? A Slab of Slits? A Babble of Bendovers? A Pride of Pussies? A Venus of Vaginas?
But we’ve never had a china cabinet. No matter where we lived it remained in a wooden box in the cupboard. My ma has a china cabinet, but it’s filled with ugly Jewel Tea crap, which I suppose you could call china, but it isn’t really. She keeps her good china in a box as well.
This is pretty disheartening.
so you wanted Max and the wife and kid not to feel special.
once they find that out they’ll never come to visit.
My mom has the china+silver and we’ve actually used them! Her oddity, though, is covering up some of the upholstery with blankets or covers to “keep it nice”. It never looks nice, of course, because it’s always got the stupid covers. She’s also a bit nutty about keeping all the shades in the windows closed to prevent stuff from fading.
We actually borrowed the really fine antique stuff (china and silverware) from my mom for family Christmas meal this year (I’m not Christian, but my wife’s family is).
When I saw it all laid out, with the table all decorated, I can see the appeal - it does look wonderful.
It was the first time my wife and I really dd the whole preparing a formal dinner thing, complete with huge roast turkey and home-made cakes - the lot - for 20 or so at our house. It was a lot of work! Like three solid days of prep. :eek:
Up peeling carrots at 2 in the AM, I was sorta doubting the value 
… but as others have done it for us in the past, hell, it was our turn.
You’re missing the point. Those dishes remained in storage for the two decades the kids lived at home and were never to be touched. She never even pulled them out for nice dinner parties we had. Don’t know WTF she was saving them for but suddenly last night she pulled them out.
It’s similar to the way that some people cover their furniture with horrible plastic covers to ‘keep them nice’. They’re not nice like that.