REALLY, GRAMMY BROWN?
Commemorative plates turned from insult to admiration for royal family
Back in the mid-1960s, I would occasionally drop in to see the paternal grandmother of my late first wife. Grammy Brown, as she was known to the family, was a somewhat coarse, elderly, and largely uneducated woman who would routinely turn up the volume of her TV set whenever I came over, I suspect for the purpose of drowning out any meaningful conversation.
One of the decorative items hanging in her living room was a small metal serving tray emblazoned with a picture of Bermuda from the 1950s — a souvenir gift from a visit to the island by her oldest daughter some years earlier. However, by then I had already developed a bad attitude toward her hospitality, and I saw the tray as somehow emblematic of her tackiness and narrow worldview.
So I decided to gently mock her by picking up souvenir plates at yard sales that could be used as dinnerware when she would come over to dine with us. It wasn’t hard to do. Plates commemorating church centennials, state highways, local forts, U.S. presidents and other distinctive events were always available, andalways cheap.
But a funny thing happens when you begin a collection — even inadvertently. As I was browsing through racks of dishes in antique stores and flea markets, I found myself starting to become more discriminating. There are plate makers, I soon discovered, with better pedigrees than others. Some had higher-end artwork. Some had better glazing. Some were simply in better taste.
As a result, my purchases tended to become more discerning. For example, some of the dishware I had purchased to mockingly showcase Grammy Brown’s bad taste actually turned out to have their own authentic integrity.
Dishes with decals proved to be less attractive than others with paintings glazed in. Some of the portraits appeared to be more authentic than others. And some of the events being commemorated seemed to me more consequential than others.
I was particularly struck by the frequency with which I came across plates and mugs commemorating some royal event or other: a coronation, a marriage, or some other life-cycle event of the British royal family. So I began to focus my collection on assembling a chronological lineage of English royalty.
My oldest example goes back to
Queen Victoria, whose dinner plate graphic — which she shares with her consort Prince Albert —
celebrates the globe-spanning British Empire upon whom the sun could never set.
Of course, there were lots of examples from the 1936 coronation of King Edward VIII, who became known as the Duke of Windsor following his abdication from the throne to marry Wallace Simpson, the American divorcee whom he claimed to love. Today, my collection — which I exhibit with pride in my living and dining rooms — includes mugs marking the various marriages of Queen Elizabeth’s children, as well as her successor to the throne, Prince Charles, now King Charles III.
Like many people, both within and outside of the British Commonwealth, I came to develop a certain remote affection for Queen Elizabeth over the years. I had originally heard her coronation on the radio in 1953. Over time, her sense of duty to the crown, her understated sense of humor and her restraint from turning the deference of her subjects into the centerpiece of her royal life made her a model that many aspiring leaders today would benefit from examining.
Today, I am proud of my royal commemorative china collection. And I now recognize that its impetus originated in an act of mockery, for which I am now ashamed.
Grammy Brown may not have shared my tastes in artwork, hospitality or current events. But she was clearly someone who, without realizing it, led to one of the most satisfying pursuits of my life as a collector. And so I both apologize to her memory and thank her for leading me onward from there.