The Story Of Some "Heirloom" China

How Part of Our Family’s Story Lives in Two Dinner Sets

The history of my family tree is growing and branching in all directions as my research continues. But so far, not a single titled lord, lady, baron or baroness has emerged from the leaves of my lineage.

Instead, what I keep finding are generations of hard-working, stoic, resilient people who spent their lives putting in long hours of toil simply to support and care for their families. Their days were filled with shift work, farm work, house work—whatever it took. Meals were sometimes meagre, and the finer things in life never miraculously appeared along their paths.

If there is a single thread running through our family stories, it isn’t wealth. It’s hard times, hard luck, and hard work - stitched through with a lot of heart.

---

Thin on the Ground: Heirlooms from Ordinary Lives

Because of this, heirlooms in our family are thin on the ground. Most of my forebears simply could not afford items of great monetary value. Life was about putting food on the table and clothes on the children’s backs, not about amassing silverware and antiques.

So as I document my family tree, I don’t have boxes full of jewels or trunks filled with portraits in gilt frames to help tell our story. Instead, I have to look more closely, to notice the quieter objects that have travelled from hand to hand.

In my own close family line, it has been china that has carried meaning and been deemed “special” enough to pass down. Plates, cups, saucers — fragile, everyday objects that somehow survived the decades when so much else was used, broken, or thrown away.

Two dinnerware sets in particular have become small but powerful anchors in our family story.

---

The “Too Good for Everyday” Set: Royal Doulton Orchids

When my parents married, my mother's family (the O'Donnells) gifted them a rather special dinnerware set: a 54-piece Royal Doulton “Orchids” set, with a lovely floral pattern, soft pastel colours, and elegant black edging. For a young couple starting out, it must have felt incredibly precious and modern — something a little bit luxurious amid the practical pots and pans of everyday life.

This was not the kind of china you stacked in the kitchen cupboard next to the chipped mugs. This was “best.”  As soon as my parents received it, the set went straight into the china cabinet.   

In many homes of that era, the china cabinet was more than a piece of furniture; it was a stage. Everything inside it—wedding gifts, crystal bowls, decorative plates — was proudly displayed like a badge of honour. 

These were the things that said, “We have something nice. We’ve made it just that little bit further than our parents did.”

The Orchids set was “too good for everyday use” and was carefully “kept for best.”

The funny thing is, in many working families, “best” never quite arrives. There is always some reason not to risk the good china: children are too young, life is too busy, there’s always a chance something might get broken.

And so, year after year, that dinnerware set stayed inside the cabinet. For at least forty years it sat there untouched, gathering stories but not crumbs. It became less an everyday object and more a symbol of hope, pride, and possibility — quietly overlooking the ordinary meals eaten just a few steps away.

When the time came and the Orchids set was passed on to me, I did exactly what tradition dictated: I put it straight into my own china cabinet. But I have also tried to break the pattern just a little.

I still treat it with care, but I do use it — for special celebratory dinners, for morning teas, or family lunches. Each time I set the table with those delicate plates and cups, I feel I’m honouring both the people who gifted it and the ones who carefully guarded it for decades.

It’s a privilege to use these beautiful objects, to let them do the job they were made for, while sharing the story behind them with whoever is sitting around the table.

---

A First Pay Packet, an Art Deco Treasure

The second heirloom set in my care has an even longer story stitched into its rims and bands.

About 85 years ago, a young man — my father — received his first few pays. Instead of spending them all on himself, he decided to buy a special gift for his mother (my grandmother Grace Connors nee Brown). With that hard-earned money he purchased a 42-piece Art Deco style dinnerware set.

This set has a cream base colour, with distinct brown and green bands and fine gold-line detailing. The style suggests it was possibly made by Johnson Brothers in England — sturdy, well-regarded dinnerware for families who wanted something nice for their table, but didn't cost the earth.

I imagine my grandmother unwrapping that gift: her son’s first wages transformed into something beautiful for her home. For a woman used to stretching every shilling, it must have felt like a small miracle. That dinner set wasn’t just china; it was love, pride, and gratitude glazed and fired into something she could touch every day.

Decades passed. Families shifted, households broke up and formed again, and somehow that set travelled through time. Eventually, it came into the hands of a close cousin of mine.

Last year, after we reconnected following nearly 40 years of limited contact, she made a generous decision. She told me that she wanted to pass the set on to me, trusting that I would care for it and, in time, pass it on to the next generation.

That moment felt like a quiet, full-circle turning of the wheel. The gift my father once chose for his mother with his very first pay packets had come back into my branch of the family tree. It had travelled from grandmother to cousin (via a couple of my aunts) to me, carrying within it all the ordinary days and special celebrations of at least three generations.

---

More Than Plates and Cups

When people think of heirlooms, they often imagine jewels, grand paintings, or antique furniture. My family’s treasures are humbler: two dinnerware sets—one Royal Doulton Orchids from my parents’ wedding, and one Art Deco set my father bought for his mother.

They may not fetch a high price at auction, but their value is not measured in money.

They speak of:

• Hard work: first pay packets turned into a gift, not a treat for oneself.

• Hope and pride: china “kept for best,” displayed as a sign of having something to show for years of labour.

• Connection: a cousin choosing to pass an heirloom along the family line, trusting it will be cherished and carried forward.

In a family tree full of people who rarely had spare coins, these fragile, beautiful objects are proof that they still sought beauty and celebration where they could.

When I set the table with these plates today, the past is suddenly very close. My parents, my grandmother, my father as a young man with his first wages, my cousin thinking about the future — they all seem to be gathered quietly around the table with us.

We may not have aristocrats in our branches or castles in our past, but we do have stories, love, and resilience fired into porcelain and edged in gold. And in the end, those are the heirlooms that matter most.