I would conservatively say its probably taken over 100 hours to go through everything in my grandparents attic.
My mom, my sister Helen, and I spent countless weekends and evenings carefully combing through the attic's countless boxes, being sure not to miss anything. Just because the top three-quarters of the box has nothing but felt and ribbons, it doesn't mean there isn't an antique vase at the bottom.
The process of "going through the attic" starts by climbing up there and staying hunched over the whole time because at 5'11"-ish I cannot stand upright without walking into beams. Then being careful to not step on any floor boards that were laid down decades ago and no longer bare human weight, I walk anywhere from three to sixty feet away from the entrance to gather up box after box. Once my arms are adequately full, I carry them back to the entrance, while still avoiding those floor boards but now I can't see my feet, and pass them down the ladder out of the attic. Once on the main floor, each box has to be gone through and all of its contents are sorted into one of four categories.
Trash/Recycle: goes out to the garage (ex: Bon Appetit magazines, and plastic bags filled with plastic bags)
Estate Sale/Donate: goes to the master bedroom (ex: extra casserole dishes Grandaddy bought in bulk for wedding presents)
Dibs/Storage Unit: gets packed up and goes into storage (ex: anything from side tables to knick-knacks that someone wants but don't have a place for right now)
Going Home with Mom Today: this is the really good stuff, that haven't been seen in so long we thought they'd been lost years ago (ex: Grandaddy's Navy uniform and Meme's Haviland)
One day we opened up a pretty heavy box labeled "Books from Italy 1997 Trip"
Inside we found Meme's Haviland china.
Meme got this in the 1940s, not long after she graduated from Girls High in Atlanta.
She was working as a teller at a bank in Atlanta.¹ She bought them from some client who banked there that was selling them, and I do not know how she knew they were for sale except for the standard rule of thumb that "tellers just know what's going on."
She was young, fresh out of school, and in her first working woman grown up job. It was one of the only times in her life that she could spend her money knowing that no one could tell her not to.² So she used the spending power of her paycheck to buy something that she unashamedly wanted. This set of Haviland china.
She loved it, she thought it was beautiful, and cherished it for years.
The set included dinner plates, salad plate, fruit dishes, creme soup dishes, cups, saucers, individual butter dishes, a sugar bowl and creamer, and eight serving pieces.
Once we had them, I did some research to know more. I knew they were already old in the 1940s, but I wanted to know more specifics.
The mark on the back says
Theodore Haviland Limoges FRANCE Patent applied for
According to HavilandOnline's chart of backmarks the underlined Theodore backmark was only produced in 1903. Having this particular mark makes me feel lucky, because most backmarks were used for anywhere between 10 and 50 years. Additional research has told me that this particular pattern is Schleiger # 1098, on blank 123. Before we go too much further let's have a little background on Haviland.
A little bit of background on Haviland
Haviland china refers to white clay porcelain produced in Limoges, France by the Haviland family starting in 1842. Throughout the years the company has broken into pieces, with some doing better than others. At some point I'll do a whole post focusing on the Havilands and their drama, but for now here's what you need to know.
Haviland china began production in 1842 with mostly continuous production to today
Haviland was produced in the Limoges region of France and shipped to America
Their popularity soared after the Civil War in 1865 and remained steady through the 1920s
There are an estimated 30,000 to 60,000 different patterns and variations of Haviland
These patterns are identified by their Schleiger number
What's a Schleiger Number?
Schleiger Numbers are how the thousands of patterns of Haviland are identified.
Arlene Schlieger got started in the late 1930s and early 1940s searching through antique stores and estate sales to fill in her mother's china that she'd inherited, because at that point she was "the next generation." Throughout this process she talked to lots of people who were doing the same, and realized that the big problem that repeatedly came up was that there was no way of describing different patterns. The best dialog one could come up with fell along the lines of, "oh its got little pink flowers, they might be be roses but I'm not sure."
She took it upon herself to make some sort of system, because there was clearly a need for one.
She started buying pieces of several different patterns and added them to her catalog. She would number them, write a description of the pattern printed on them, and note what blank they are printed on. The blank was the physical pattern of the piece of china, to which the printed pattern would be added. Blanks would be used for several different patterns, or sold on their own so women could paint china at home.³ In addition to the description, She had her son, Dick, do ink drawings of each pattern.
Their first book, Two Hundred Patterns of Haviland China Book I was printed in 1950. Really it was more than two hundred patterns because it included variations on patterns. This would change the Schleiger number from # 33 to # 33A. Variations could include changes such as
Printed on a different blank
Gold trim has been added
Inverse of colors
Added details
Allowing for variations made the system slightly more organized, gathering like patterns together, rather than exclusively arranging them by the order she received them.
Once word got out, she started receiving pieces from collectors and dealers to contribute to the system. She preferred to collect saucers, because they were smaller than say a dinner plate and so she could have a consistent reference point for each pattern. Book II was printed in 1952.
While working on Book III, Dick was called into active duty in the Navy for the Korean War. This did not dissuade Arlene from continuing. Whenever Dick arrived at port there would be a box of neatly packed Haviland saucers waiting for him. He would spend his down time on the ship working on his sketches so he could ship them back home with the saucers the next time they arrived at port. That's what I call a dedication to cataloging china. He was discharged after the war, and Book III was printed in 1955.
By the time Book IV was printed in 1960, Arlene Schleiger's basement walls were lined with with shelving to display the more than 4,000 pieces of Haviland she'd collected and cataloged.
After printing Book V in 1974, Arlene retired from collecting in 1976, passing the reigns to Dick and his wife Dona. Dick and Dona printed Book VI in 1991. Arlene's collection was, at some point, lost in a fire. Dick attempted to rebuild the collection and had gathered around 850 pieces before his death in 2004, 21 years after his mother's death.
So how do I find my Schleiger number?
Unfortunately, because the cataloging of china patterns were/are a kind of niche hobby, these books weren't very widely printed and don't remain in print. All copies are now second hand, and aren't available in any digital form. So, how do you figure out what your Schleiger number is? There are a couple of ways. The first way is to go to an online retailer like Ebay.com, Replacements.com, or sometimes even Etsy.com and search "Haviland Schleiger" and look through the results for something that looks pretty similar to yours. The most common patterns will come up and its pretty likely that yours is also a common pattern. If something comes up that looks mostly similar but not quite search for variations of that Schleiger number.
If that sounds tedious to you, the easier (although in my opinion much less satisfying) way is to go to HavilandCollectors.com and submit front and back pictures of your dishes to their pattern identification form so a collector can look at it and get back to you. I'm not sure how long it takes but the website seems like its still operational, so I don't think it'll just go into a void. Once you have your Schleiger number, you can do exactly what Arlene Schleiger would want you to do, and complete your mother's set of dishes!
The Schleigers worked tirelessly to make a catalog that could help the next generation better communicate about the beautiful china that they'd found in the attic or bought second hand. Arlene Schleiger found herself with obstacles as the next generation in the 1940s while trying to fill in her mother's set of Haviland. She decided to make it easier for the generation after her to continue the work. Dick took on the role as the next generation and illustrated for her, and did his best to recollect once her collection was lost. The mark they left on china collection cannot be overstated. Their legacy will carry on for generations to come, and we should all be thankful for them.
-Catherine
1 With my mom and my sister Helen both working at a bank, I start to wonder at what point are we a "banking family?"
2 At a certain point in about her 70s she regained this mindset of "no one can tell me not to buy this" although now it wasn't because it was no one else's money, but because Grandaddy(the other person who's money it was) agreed that no one could tell her not to buy it.
3 We'll do another post at some point about the practice of painting china blanks.
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