Stories from the High Tea

Betsy at her table
(c) Savoring the Sweet Life

 The women go all out in decorating their tables for the Annual High Tea. Betsy Veneziano was the chair and her table design was really cool. All the gals at her table also wore fascinators.

If you want to see all the tables you can go to Facebook to see Jacqui Todd’s photos of all the tables. Professional photographers also took photos, which she has generously given us permission to use here. You can see all the photos at Savoring the Sweet Life.

So many of the hostesses used china that either had special meaning to them or that they’d inherited. Today and next week, we’ll share two of those stories. Stay tuned for more in the September tidings.

(c) Savoring the Sweet Life

From Jennifer Burgess: 

I inherited this dinner set from my mother-in-law. She had this from her gift shop way back when In Long Island, New York.  From what I remember she said that it is one of the dinner sets her parents had brought over from Germany. 

I would say that it is at least 60 years old or more. I did some research and found out that is from Denmark. The artist is Fanny Garde. The  company is Bing and Grondahl. This design first came about in 1895 and is very popular with the Danish families and the seagull collection was discontinued in 1997. Now it is a collectors item so if you break it it is hard to find a replacement. The more common one is without the gold rim. The gold rim ones are very limited and has a number on it. This helps to identify the year  it is made.

Jennifer's and Ruth Lim's table setting
(c) Savoring the Sweet Life

My mother in law had always told me that what ever happens to keep this set as it holds a lot of memories as she used it a lot when the family got together. My husband David said he remembered that his mom only used this set on very special occasions, especially with her family, and she is very careful to make sure that her kids do not break any of them. So I'm glad I inherited this.