Mothers Day Tablesetting with Wedgwood Queens Ware & Necklaces!

It has only taken me 3 years to get around to doing a tablescape with these very rare and special Wedgwood plates and listing them for sale in my shop.    I have been holding onto them because I've wanted to do a Spring or Summer tablescape with them.      

Each plate is truly a work of art and features a different castle, is hand painted in cobalt enamel, and signed 'A Holland', who,  after my research I have found is Arthur Dale Holland, a prolific landscape artist working for Wedgwood at the time.  The artist additionally put the name of each castle on the back of the plates.

  The plates are called Queens Ware, a term you may have heard or read about before.  Queens Ware is Wedgwood's innovatory cream colored earthenware named after the successful completion of his first commission for Queen Charlotte which was secured in the Summer of 1765.   With the delivery of, as Wedgwood wrote, " a complete set of tea things' which included a dozen cups for coffee or tea, six fruit baskets and stands, six melon preserve pots and six hand candlesticks, Josiah Wedgwood was permitted to title his cream colored earthenware 'Queens Ware' and was appointed the title of 'Potter to Her Majesty'.  

The plates have intricate embossed Wellesley borders of various fruits and rope motif's.  The blue painted castle landscapes are framed with a 2mm silver overlay followed by a line of fine, dark green and then with the wide, mint green band.  I am a sucker for the embossed plates. 

In lieu of placemats I anchored the plates with lace trimmed Jacquard napkins allowing the tips to hang over the side of a table as a tablecloth would do.

The tips of the napkins touch each other creating a checkerboard effect on the table top.

And you may have wondered why there is a necklace at each setting.  Well, just look at them...the plates and the necklaces just begged to be at the same place at the same time.  They look like they were made for one another, so I placed a gift for the Mom's at each setting, curved around the base of each plate. Isn't this a fun idea for Mother's Day or any type of ladies tea or luncheon? (by the way, I am closing out all jewelry in my shop and it's 75% off)

For the centerpiece I pulled this absolutely gorgeous and humongous, circa 1880's antique wash basin and pitcher off a table in our sunroom.   I was going to fill it with fresh something or other...well let me say I was going to fill it with free fresh something or other.   I spied some way overgrown, out of control bush, but with the prettiest white flowers, at the park the other day  and was going to run back up there and cut a couple branches of it off.  Unfortunately time didn't allow for that.  So, silk flowers it is. 

 I just can't quit looking at the way the mint green and cobalt blue work so beautifully together.  

I really love the color combination.  Do you?

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