Restaurant
China
General Pattern Information
1. Since the 1800s tens of thousands
of commercial china patterns have been produced by more than two hundred manufacturers.
Many were never given a pattern name... simply a number as shown on the following 1937
Onondaga Pottery catalog page.
It would take an entire room filled
with dozens of floor to ceiling bookcases to contain illustrations of all these patterns.
In addition, as the years have passed, most records and catalogs containing named or
numbered patterns have been destroyed by fire (due to kiln accidents) or flood
(manufacturers were often situated adjacent to a body of water for shipping purposes), or
even discarded simply because they were considered out-of-date useless information by
china company personnel. Unfortunately, due to this situation, we will never know the name
or even number of most pre-1980 patterns.
2. You may notice that certain patterns were
made by many companies. This often happened when the original manufacturer went out of
business or a competitive firm offered a lower price. Customers reordered from another
company which copied the pattern as closely as possible. In addition, when a manufacturer
was purchased by another company, pattern and shape rights were included in the purchase.
Most patterns were not copyrighted.
3. When a pattern is (or was) produced by two or
more companies, it often has more than one name. Conversely, different patterns made by
more than one manufacturer sometimes have the same name. Each manufacturer named its
patterns as it deemed appropriate without consideration or perhaps even knowledge of
another company's pattern names.
4. Prolific patterns such as "Indian
Tree" and "Blue Willow" are produced all over the world in both household
and commercial (restaurant grade) china, adorning earthenware, vitrified china, and
porcelain bodies. Each manufacturer seems to have its own version of these patterns. There
are variations in color, border design, and sometimes basic pattern elements. On occasion
a manufacturer has given one of these common patterns a nonstandard name. For example,
Buffalo China referred to a variation of "Indian Tree" as "Mandalay"
and others call the pattern "Tree of Life."
5. Many commercial china manufacturers assigned a
number, rather than name, to a pattern. Since these patterns were not advertised in the
news media (as is household china), names apparently were not considered necessary. On the
other hand, Mayer China and Buffalo China frequently included pattern names on early
backstamps. Most companies have named all their patterns since circa 1980.
6. Syracuse China's pattern names (and perhaps
those of other manufacturers) reflect the border or main decal, transfer print, or
Shadowtone design. Variations in color or the addition of lines, bands, and in some cases even
center decoration (when an ornate border is considered the main pattern element) often
occur without change of pattern name.
7. A stock pattern is part of a standard product line,
but is frequently not maintained in stock. It can, however, be ordered by
any customer. Therefore a stock pattern used by a railroad or ship line was
most likely also used by many restaurants and hotels. Unless china decorated with a stock
pattern is backstamped with the customer's name, proof of usage by a specific
transportation line or a specific foodservice concern is impossible to establish and value is
considerably less. The difference is so extreme in the case of railroad china, that values
are given with and without a customer backstamp in Restaurant China Volume 1.
8. Many transportation (railroad, ship line, and
airline) patterns have been assigned pattern names and letter-number codes
by collector reference authors in order to assist in communication between
buyers and sellers. Certain other specialized areas (e.g., military or
western patterns) have also been given pattern names and sometimes pattern
codes for the same purpose. The author of Restaurant China Volume 1 and 2,
Barbara Conroy, continues to assign names to nameless patterns,
carrying on the tradition Richard Luckin and Doug McIntyre used in their railroad china books.
