This is a beautiful plate which I was able to recently add to my collection of Cottage china. I think I was programmed at an early age, as I am just an absolute sucker for the words "Cottage", "Farmhouse", "Country" . . . Show me a Helen Allingham picture and I go weak at the knees. When I was about 8 years old, I was given a lovely country cottage jigsaw puzzle. It showed an old thatched cottage, with a woman in a blue dress leaning out of an open window. An old man worked in the garden, and a little girl was on the cobbled path. There was a birch tree behind the cottage. I still have it, minus one or two pieces sadly. I think the Hollyhocks are the essential ingredient, and the thatched cottage . . . sometimes a lady in a crinoline too!
This piece I found - as usual - at a Car Boot Sale, and because it had a tiny chip on the bottom, it only cost £1. It stands at the back of the hall on the top of an old oak cupboard, next to the Uncle Tom Cobley set I showed you last week. On display upstairs, I have a little jug and a lovely vegetable dish in the same pattern, and I'm always on the look-out for more.
