Searching
for Nanette
Last summer on a hot and windless night, I flopped about in bed, restless. I was too hyped up on caffeine and frustration to sleep. So, I opened my phone and started to do what I often do when these menopausal sleepless nights take hold: cruise my favorite secondhand shopping sites. I started with EBTH… then a little Craigslist… oh, some Ebay for fun... I wasn't looking for anything in particular. Just using some of my routine search terms: Italy, Italian, Venetian, mid century, garden. I didn't have any money to spend. I was just browsing the modern-day all-night mall. And then I cruised over to FBMP and input the search term I have used for decades…
But I should back up.
My mother’s china pattern, Nanette by Heinrich H&C.
The Story Behind the Pattern
My parents got married in 1971. As befitting any Chicago-area bride of the era, my mother went to Marshall Fields in downtown Chicago to register and to choose her wedding china, silver, and crystal. She was a pediatric RN in the city. My dad was finishing college at SMU in Texas. They were married in June in their hometown of Naperville, Illinois, and promptly moved back to Dallas together. In their UHaul were eight place settings and a few serving pieces of their new fine china – gifts from friends and family for their new life together.
As children, my sister and I were raised in reverential awe of the wedding china. It was beautiful – a blue pattern on crisp white porcelain that looked like the crystals of a chandelier draped all the way around each piece. Its name: Nanette. We used it for Easter brunch and Thanksgiving dinner. It made the Christmas turkey taste even better with the gravy boat and its funny attached plate on the bottom. Birthday cake with Nanette: more decadent and delightful. And sometimes after school or on a Saturday, we could have a tea party – lukewarm tea poured into the coffee cups with sparkly sugar cubes in the sugar bowl.
But we also knew that the "good china" was precious. By the time I was six, I could explain that the pattern was discontinued – they didn't make it anymore – and if we broke anything, it would be impossible to replace it.
You see, while they received eight place settings and a few serving pieces for their wedding, the manufacturer, Heinrich H&Co – a German company – stopped making the pattern about the same time they got married. So despite my mother's inquiries and phone calls, there was no more Nanette to be had.
Why it Matters: Family, Memory, & Making Beauty
My sister and I learned to carefully set the table with our beautiful good china – lining up the silverware, positioning the plates so that the pattern was oriented just so. We learned to be cautious unloading the dishwasher and walking solemnly to the china hutch – holding our breath lest we trip. We learned to eat with care, never scratching our plates with our knives or allowing our forks to clatter.
Despite the rarity of her good china, my mother insisted that it be used – even by small children. And she imbued in us a reverence for the things that are important to other people just like our own.
The Hunt for Nanette:
Thrift Stores, Online Searches, Germany
When I started to furnish my own first apartment in Minnesota, I began what would become a decades-long quest. Every garage sale, antiques store, flea market, or church bazaar I visited, I looked for Nanette. Minnesota and Chicago aren't so far apart – surely someone here had chosen the beautiful blue and white pattern, too. Certainly my mother wasn't alone! When magazines featured plate walls or homages to blue and white, I scoured the images looking for her pattern. It became so subconscious that I one day realized that I was checking TV and movie sets for it, too, sometimes rewinding and pausing to check out a piece on the wall or a plate on a table.
Nothing.
At some point in the 1980's my mother learned of Replacements, a company that specializes in helping people find missing china pieces. She registered her pattern hoping they would be able to find some. She never heard from them. The only photos they have of the pattern on their website are photos she sent in of her own china. With the advent of the internet and Ebay and Craigslist as well as Replacements' own huge online catalogue, I was sure it would turn up somewhere! But with alerts set and Google searches done: nothing.
For years: nothing.
My sister and I both married. We chose our own china patterns. She chose wisely – Royal Copenhagen's Blue Fluted Plain – a pattern that has been in production since 1775. I chose frugally – Ralph Lauren's Claire that was, you guessed it, discontinued soon after our wedding.
Now, clearly there are more important things in the world. China patterns are frivolous, ephemeral things. But I also know the power of beauty in our lives. And no matter how humble a place we live, making our homes beautiful is one of my family's tenets. We are thrifty. We shop secondhand. We DIY. We save the unsalvageable. After my parents' divorce, there were some harrowing financial stretches, but our home, no matter what, was neat, tidy, and beautiful – with the good china on the hutch setting the tone. And honestly, that kind of beauty imparts a dignity — even in an ugly little house owned by the world's most parsimonious landlady with monkey wallpaper in the kitchen (yes, monkeys!).
My china pattern, Ralph Lauren's Claire.
Tablescapes
& Vintage Elegance
My sister and I both inherited my mother's aesthetic. We were grandmillennials before that was even a word (and we aren't Millennials, we are Gen X, thank you very much). Our homes are very different, but they are furnished in much the same way. And we both love to set a beautiful table.
Not long after my sister married, I was cruising Craigslist one day and found someone selling off a huge selection of her china pattern for next to nothing. My mom and I conspired to buy it and parse it out over several holidays – but we couldn't wait and gave it all to her that Christmas. She was shocked. A few years later, on Christmas Eve, my mother put a flat, heavy gift in my lap. I opened it to find the completion of my sterling silver pattern – collected over years from Ebay and estate sales. Together we have fitted out our tables with beautiful dinnerware which we use regularly just like our mother does. Our children delight in setting our tables with the "fancy china" just like we did.
I have daydreamed about finding Nanette in the wild – a full service for 8 in an antique store or a few serving pieces at an estate sale. My husband knows that if I stop at a garage sale, that's what I am looking for – and he knows to look for it, too. But I have also worried: what if I find it at last and can't afford it? Is it so rare that sellers will charge exorbitant prices knowing that it is a precious commodity?
And honestly, I had nearly given up on the hunt. Baby Boomers aren't downsizing like their parents did. Maybe they will hold on to their china to the end and whoever is out there with Nanette on their dining tables – maybe like my mom they are still hosting Christmas dinners, setting beautiful tables for every holiday, and enjoying their china. I hope so.
Once a piece of Nanette showed up on a reverse-image-search on eBay in Germany, but it had already sold. And when I was in Bavaria for work on several occasions, I spent my free time scouring antique shops looking for my not-quite-antique Nanette. Surely, since it had been made in Bavaria, I might find it there? I found lots of beautiful Bavarian-made cobalt china, but no Nanette.
Setting a beautiful table is important for my entire family, no matter how modest the meal.
My sister’s china pattern, Royal Copenhagen’s Blue Fluted Plain.
The photos on the Replacements.com website are from my mom’s china collection. They may never have had it in stock!
The Story of Heinrich H&C
and Bavarian Bone China
Heinrich H&C was started in the city of Selb, in northern Bavaria, in 1896. Franz Heinrich began by painting porcelain produced locally, but within years his company was making their own porcelain and grew to be a large regional employer – Porzellanfabrik Heinrich Selb. The company survived two world wars and continued to grow in post-WWII Germany. They began producing bone china, considered the finest kind of porcelain. In the 1970's Heinrich was sold, however, to a British conglomerate, and it became part of Villeroy and Boch.
Villeroy and Boch absorbed Heinrich because of their high-quality production methods, and the Selb facility became their bone china production center – fitting given Bavarian china's place in tableware history. Bavaria has been an important porcelain production center in Europe since the late 1700's due in large part to the discovery of stores of kaolin, the raw material for European porcelain.
On the back of each Nanette plate are also the words "Echt Kobalt" – real cobalt. Cobalt oxide is the pigment which creates the brilliant blue design on pieces of porcelain, the process for which dates back to the 800s in China and gained popularity in Europe in the 1700s – around the same time that Europeans developed their own porcelain production processes. Blue and white has been a sought-after color combination for centuries, and it endures.
My mom is obsessed with blue and white – her house is a love letter to the color blue in all of its shades. And that classic combination of blue and a crisp white gives any home a timelessness, a coolness which endures while other fashions come and go (I'm looking at you, grey). And her china still holds pride of place on her hutch as it has since the beginning.
The listing photos on FBMP — clearly the Nanette I was looking for.
Finding Nanette
at Last
So on that sleepless night, I was mindlessly scrolling, hoping sleep would come when I opened FBMP and typed in "Heinrich China."
And there it was… "Vintage Germany Heinrich Echt Kobalt fine China Dinnerware -12 place settings. Never used." And the photo: it was Nanette. Unmistakably Nanette.
AND it was only two hours away.
AND it was affordable.
I lost my mind! I desperately messaged the seller – at 2 am – saying I wanted to buy it. Could I send the money immediately? I'd lost sales on other items before. I was NOT taking the chance of losing this one.
And then I waited.
I couldn't sleep. I was so excited. And it was too middle-of-the-night to tell anyone. So I lay there praying they wouldn't already have a buyer. Praying it wasn't an old listing. Praying they hadn't already donated it or given it away.
I did finally sleep. And the next morning I texted my sister: "Look what I found last night on FB…" with a screenshot. Her response: "OMG!!"
I checked my messages every two minutes. No response. No response. No response. Then finally: the seller responded. It was mine! She sent photos of the serving pieces and even offered to drive halfway to meet up. And then she marked the item "sold."
So, in the parking lot of a Home Goods just off the interstate, we met. It turns out, this china had been her mother's who loved and collected china. And then it was her own. But she had never used it. She didn't even know where it came from or how her mother got it, though her brother-in-law had worked for a German china manufacturer. And she had almost donated it, but then thought she should try to sell it first.
I told her about my own mother and our family quest. "You're sure it is THIS pattern?" she asked. Oh, yes. I would know it anywhere.
I carefully loaded the boxes of Nanette into the car and drove home as cautiously as I had when we drove our newborn home from the hospital. And all the while I pictured placing those wrapped boxes full of Nanette under the Christmas tree.
As it turned out, we gathered for Thanksgiving last year – and we were a few plates short. Perfect timing. My son and his cousins carried in box upon box and placed them all around my mom. I'm not sure she even knew what to say, honestly. We had looked for so long – to open up boxes of Nanette… it was rather surreal.
Now she has everything she could possibly want – and I have some place settings at my house, too. When I'm missing her, I just have lunch with Nanette.
Your Turn to Hunt: Tips for Collecting Vintage China
Holiday Tablesettings at My Home
for more about making holidays festive, check out my Holidays Guide!
