Pennsylvania shop is a Fiesta fanatic's dream

A new shop on 5th Avenue in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania boasts thousands of colorful cups, plates and other dinnerware. Still, owner Rebecca Taylor readily admits she didn't know much about Fiesta until the 1990s, when she went antiquing with her mother and happened upon an iconic coffee pot from 1954. It was a seminal moment.

Bewitched by its cheery, original green glaze and art deco styling, she was instantly hooked.

“It was the design,” she recalls, noting the signature band of concentric rings. “The lines just stood out with the color.”

Eager to scratch that newfound itch, the Missouri native started looking for and buying vintage pieces for her dining room at flea markets, auctions and antique stores. It wasn't until she extended her search to the world's biggest marketplace — Facebook — that she “broke it wide open,” she says with a grin.

By the time she relocated to Neville Island from Florida in 2011, Taylor had stacks of Fiesta ware in a rainbow of colors and styles — everything from coffee cups and saucers to tea pots, plates, vases, sugar bowls and egg cups. Multiple visits to Fiesta's factory outlet in Newell, West Virginia — where lines can stretch a mile during their annual tent sales — only added to her extensive reserve.

Rebecca Taylor, owner of Keeping it Real Collectables in Coraopolis, started collecting vintage and new Fiesta ware 30 years ago.

Taylor had so much Fiesta, both new and old, that in 2019, she opened a booth inside Emma Jeans Relics in Coraopolis. With her evergrowing collection soon piling up in a back room, she knew she “had to get out” and open her own store. On Small Business Day in November, she did just that, launching Keeping it Real Collectables next door in the space formerly occupied by One Man's Junk.

She has met lots of fellow Fiesta fanatics, and she's not surprised by their devotion.

“It's the bright colors and variety,” she says. “And the durability.”

Based in East Liverpool, Ohio, Homer Laughlin China has been making ceramic dinnerware since the 1870s.The pottery introduced its brightly colored, ceramic-glazed “Fiesta” collection of dinnerware in 1936 at the Pittsburgh China & Glass Show. Almost immediately, it became a crowd favorite. By the time the company introduced a sixth color — turquoise — a year later, more than 1 million pieces were weighing down American cupboards.

Homer Laughlin had to stop making its Radioactive Red dinnerware during World War II because uranium was a key ingredient in the color formula — the heavy metal was needed for bombs — but demand remained high. In 1948, Fiesta sales peaked with 10 million pieces sold.

By the 1960s, however, the dinnerware had fallen out of favor, leading to its discontinuation in 1973. It made a comeback in 1986, when Bloomingdale's department stores reintroduced it with a contemporary color palette to mark the brand's 50th anniversary.

Since day one, Fiesta has been sold by the piece as open stock instead of in sets; buyers were encouraged to mix and match the different colors. Its brief discontinuation made it collectible because vintage pieces are in such short supply.