Tuesday Cuppa Tea, Gingerbread Christmas Tea Dunoon and Miss Read

Happy sunny Dec. 12th! Hooray! We love the sun...we don't see it too terribly much in December here so it is wonderful!

I am joining Tuesday Cuppa Tea with Antiques And Teacups, Gingerbread Christmas Tea with Plumed Pen and the other tea related blogs at the bottom of the post.

I have another Christmas design tea mug by Dunoon  to share today. This one I found at an estate auction. The mug is long discontinued and dates to 1990. It is stoneware and was made in Scotland, not England. But I love the nostalgic Christmas design.

I mentioned in a post a few days ago that Miss Read, a favorite author, had done only 2 Christmas volumes...and then I remembered...No Holly For Miss Quinn.

The story surrounds a career woman planning to paint her home instead of celebrating Christmas coming to the rescue of a beloved and overworked brother who's wife is ill. Miss Quinn comes to look after their children and learns some lessons about giving and loving. It is a lovely book with the usual wonderful illustrations by. J. Goodall that we have come to love.

The book has even influenced a pianist to write and record a song. This is from Enya in her album Shepherd's Moon :

And, lastly a Christmas cross stitch from the 1970s...one of the first Christmas pieces I did.

 
Please join the other blog parties and enjoy the holidays!

 

Ruth ~ http://antiquesandteacups.blogspot.com/
Tuesday Cuppa Tea

Martha~  http://www.marthasfavorites.com/ 
Teacup Tuesday 
Terri~  http://artfulaffirmations.blogspot.com/ 
Teacup Tuesday

Wanda Lee~  http://silkenpurse.blogspot.com/ 
Teapot and Tea Things Tuesday 
Pam~  http://breathoffreshair-paperbutterfly.blogspot.com/ 
Teapot and Tea Things Tuesday 
Wanda Lee~  http://theplumedpen.blogspot.com/ 
Tea For Two and Wednesday Tea For Me and Thee

Trisha~  http://sweetology101.blogspot.com/ 
Tea Party Tuesday

Lady Katherine~  http://ladykatherineteaparlor.blogspot.com/ 
Teatime Tuesday

Sandi  ~  http://sandimyyellowdoor.blogspot.com

Teatime Tuesday

Kathy~  http://blissfulrhythm.blogspot.com/
Victoria - A Return to Loveliness

Bernideen’s ~ http://bernideensteatimeblog.blogspot.com

Friends Sharing Tea Wednesday

Prince Charles Releases his Christmas Card Photo, Buckingham Palace Wedgwood Christmas Plate

There was a great article in the Daily Mail online  yesterday because Prince Charles released the photo he and Camilla will be using for their Christmas cards.

The image was taken on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after the wedding of his son Prince William and Catherine Middleton. The is holding his step grand daughter. I think that's such a great photo. The Daily Mail headline is Greetings From Grandpapa Charles.! The article also includes some great past Royal Family Christmas cards which are really interesting. Have a look.

In the Christmas and Buck House theme, here is a Wedgwood annual Christmas 1979 jasperware plate of Buckingham Palace that we have. I love Wedgwood blue jasperware and have quite a bit of it. It is no longer being made in the UK which is such a shame!

There are still a few items made at the Wedgwood (now Wedgwood Waterford) Museum and Visitor Centre in Barlaston by Stoke-on-Trent. I had a whole photo essay of the process taken last time we were there, down loaded to my travel laptop, which then crashed in the hotel the night we docked back in the US after a week's crossing on Queen Mary 2 back from England. I lost all the photos! I was devastated! Sigh... But this is from a Wedgwood book I have, Wedgwood, A Collector's Guide by Peter Williams. 

The body of the item is a cream to buff color, whatever color it will be when fired. Then, when it is still damp, the motif his hand applied by an artist. The figures are about 2mm thick and are easily broken unless, like these artists, you know what you are doing! Then the process is quickly and deftly done. I love jasperware!

For more info on the Christmas Buckingham Palace plate or other items of Wedgwood jasperware at Time Was Antiques, click on the photos.

Thursday Teacups And Tea Things, Miss Read Christmas Tales Dunoon Christmas Mug

Hi there. It's Thursday Teacups And Tea Things. Thanks for joining me. I am also joining Teacup Thursday with Miss Spenser and Vintage Thingie Thursday with Coloradolady.

I love Christmas mugs...at times I have had 20 or more around the house, but tend to give them away with goodies for my tea drinking friends. But we stocked Dunoon mugs in our antique & tea items shop for years, because we loved the quality. I'm drinking my morning cuppa in one at the moment, but I'll share that one another day. ANYWAY, I recently found this one. The mug is by a favorite Dunoon artist Sue Scullard and goes back to 2001. But the design is so cute. I love the framed windows with all the Christmas goodies inside!  So this is my teacup for today.

To see more of this mug or other Christmas china or Dunoon mugs, click on the photos.

If you have followed my blog for long, you will know that I love Miss Read, the pseudonym of a teacher who wrote a large series of books about several small, rural schools in the small villages in the Cotswolds, England spanning the end of Queen Victoria's reign to World War II. They are a joy and a wonderful window into, really, a vanished England, the one related to my by my family and my husband and his family. The England they knew which is very hard to find now.

Although there are Christmas sections in many of her books, she did 2 exclusively Christmas themed books. This one, Christmas Tales,  was published in 1995. I read it every year. It is 2 stories in one book. Village Christmas which is the story of a baby born in the small village of Fairacre to a new family having difficulty fitting in with old fashioned village ways, and the child's impact on the village.

The other story is called The Christmas Mouse and is about a small boy runaway and his encounter with an elderly spinster at Christmas and other village situations and nostalgic looks back to another century and customs. The book...as all Miss Read stories are...charming, touching and uplifting. The illustrations are wonderful.

It's the sort of book that is part of my annual Christmas reading list. I sit with a lovely Christmas cup of tea in a Christmas mug and just indulge in the pleasure of good literature about the season. Ahh....what can be better???

 

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A Child's Christmas In Wales by Dylan Thomas, Time Was Antiques Free Ship Coupon

Each of us probably has favorite books that only come our of hiding at Chritsmas and I have many. I have Christmas time reading rituals...always read certain books...and greet them as old friends we have forgotten but are delighted upon encountering them again. A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas is one of these.

The book was written & published in 1954 and has been produced in many versions since then. This is illustrated with watercolors by Edward Ardizzone. It has been produced in film form several times. Sometime in the 1960s I remember seeing a TV version read by Richard Burton who's Welsh musicality was perfect for it.

The story is a narrative by a boy during the Christmas season...totally from his point of view, and is a comic and lyric tour de force!

"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button nose, tingled down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on fishmonger's slabs. He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's hump, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was gone."
"Get back to presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cosies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were moustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and one I hade a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us. A pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to WOULD skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp except why."

 
I know blog posts should be short, but there are episodes with the descriptions of the snoring uncles, "breathing like dolphins", the aunts that had had too much parsnip wine, the treats, the dinner, the outings with friends, the presents...basically everything. A joy from start to finish.

So...enjoy the books...the old friend visiting until it's time to forget them for another year when we will discover them anew. Another joy of Christmas!

 Time Was Antiques continues their special FREE Shipping any US order over $30.00.  Code CYBER or #029

Tuesday Cuppa Tea, Dunoon Christmas Mug, Christmas With Victoria

Good morning! (at least it is here in the far upper left of the country!) and a great day to join several neat tea themed blogs like Tuesday Cuppa Tea with Antiques And Teacups and this week, besides the list of the tea related blogs below I usually join, I am also joining Sandi for her Christmas Tea and Kathy for her Christmas With Victoria.

This is a great Christmas theme tea mug that was made by Dunoon, England in 2005. The mug was designed by Sue Scullard, the artist who designed the great English Cottage mugs our customers loved...before they discontinued them. Boooo!!!! Her designs are just terrific! I love the way the Christmas trees are framed in snowy wondows. Sigh...so nostalgic. It's obviously time to get out my King's College Christmas CDs!

To see more about the Dunoon mug at Time Was Antiques, click on the photos.

I have, I think, 8 different Christmas With Victoria hardback books which are part of my annual Victoria December reading binge. The photos are so lovely, the recipes divine, and I just love the stories, poems and ...just Victoria! I tried to photo some pages, but my camera is still not speaking to the computer at the moment. I did find some Victoria December magazine cover photos though.

As I was looking through some of my England photos from past trips, I found some of my favorite...well, one of them anyway!...villages in the Cotswolds, Bourton-On-The-Water. A wonderful little village with a river running though it. Nearby is our favorite splurge Country House Hotel, Washburne Court Hotel in Lower Slaughter. I use a photo I took of it as an avatar and logo on some of my sites:

 My honey on a bridge in Lower Slaughter.

And views of Bourton during a trip in May with an unexpected snowfall.  But being Christmas made me remember the photos, which are quite at home in a Christmas post!
 

Have a wonderful day visiting the other tea and Christmas related blogs, and don't forget to have a cuppa tea with a friend!

Ruth ~ http://antiquesandteacups.blogspot.com/
Tuesday Cuppa Tea

Martha~  http://www.marthasfavorites.com/ 
Teacup Tuesday 
Terri~  http://artfulaffirmations.blogspot.com/ 
Teacup Tuesday

Wanda Lee~  http://silkenpurse.blogspot.com/ 
Teapot and Tea Things Tuesday 
Pam~  http://breathoffreshair-paperbutterfly.blogspot.com/ 
Teapot and Tea Things Tuesday 
Wanda Lee~  http://theplumedpen.blogspot.com/ 
Tea For Two and Wednesday Tea For Me and Thee

Trisha~  http://sweetology101.blogspot.com/ 
Tea Party Tuesday

Lady Katherine~  http://ladykatherineteaparlor.blogspot.com/ 
Teatime Tuesday

Sandi  ~  http://sandimyyellowdoor.blogspot.com

Teatime Tuesday

Kathy~  http://blissfulrhythm.blogspot.com/
Victoria - A Return to Loveliness

Teacup Thursday, Spode Christmas Tree, American Annual Of Art 1978

Hello and happy December 1st. Didn't that sneak up on us? It did me. But the outside lights are up and the tree is up but not all decorated. Will find the Christmas CDs & videos in the closet and...Bob's your uncle!

For Teacup Thursday with Miss Spenser's blog and Vintage Thingie Thursday with Coloradolady, I have chosen a prennial favorite of mine...Christmas Tree by Spode, which has been being made for about 30 years now. It is really a classic pattern, and so nostalgic. Unfortunatly it is no longer made in the UK, which is a shame. But... There are different versions with and without green trim and mark differences. This set was made in the UK in the 1970s. Cool! I love the little sprigs of mistletoe!

For more info on the Spode Christmas Tree teacup at Time Was Antiques, click on the photos.

When I was a kindergarten teacher in the 1970s I worked with a woman from the mid west who introduced me to the American Annual Of Literature And Art which was produced by the Augsburg Publishing House in Minneapolis, Minn. The first annual was published in 1931. I don't think it is still published, but I have a few I get out annually at Christmas. This is the 1978 edition. It is a large size paperback, and I had difficulty photographing it, but here are a few of the pages and articles:

 There are stories, poems, music manuscripts and art works in various media. One of the annual features I love is a story  or narrative of the people in a small town in the Victorian era through the first World War leading up to Christmas with all sorts of fun vignettes, snippets of lore and custom and the cutest drawings. Wonderful!

Then there is always a full page contemporary...to the date of publication...art work relating to the nativity. This is the one for 1979 by Richard Huele:

Have a wonderful day visiting the teacup and vintage thingies...and Christmas is coming!