What a crock

I seem to be obsessing about kitchenware at the moment, so let's just go with it.


This delightful object is a piece of Cornishware, a traditional English design invented at the TG Green factory in Derbyshire in the 1920s. I bought this cup and saucer to use at my desk in my first "proper" job -- a typical gay attempt to mark territory in the absence of the traditional device of a photo of my wife (not that I've ever had a wife. Er...).


Cornishware became a huge success, and I doubt there were many houses in Britain between the 1920s and the 1980s that didn't have at least a couple of pieces of it -- often storage jars or jugs.


It's made on a wheel by cutting through a blue slip to reveal the cream clay underneath. Traditionally it has three stripes on upright objects, and two rings on flatware like plates and saucers.


The traditional family pottery of TG Green went the way of most British manufacturing, and the factory closed in 2007.


Tragedy was averted, however, when the designs and brand were sold to a Cornishware enthusiast, who has set up a new company to produce a range of traditional and modern shapes in the distinctive blue and cream design (though it's now manufactured in China, alas, like everything else).


Cornishware by TG Green was relaunched last year, and as well as the traditional mid-blue it now comes in a range of rather fine 1920s colours.


Traditionalists like me only really approve of mid-blue, though...


The new company packs their crockery in some of the loveliest boxes I've seen for a long while -- great design:


But it's the crockery itself which I find irresistible.


It feels to me like outside eating ware or breakfast ware. There's something al fresco about it, which is maybe one of the reasons why it makes me feel happy.


It was named by a TG Green employee way back in the day when, on seeing it, he rather poetically observed that it was the colours of the blue sky and the white-crested waves of Cornwall.