Red Stripes and Cherries

For Valentine's, my tabletop enjoyed Retro Red Stripe Fiesta dinnerware from the Homer Laughlin China Collector's Association with a cloth that featured stylized cherries and turquoise bows. In celebration of the release of the next pieces in the Retro Red Stripe line, let's revisit stripes and cherries with a cloth from the Weil & Durrse Company, also known as Wilendur.

This cherry print was designed by John Madsen in 1947 according to Michelle Hayes in her book Elegant Table Linens from Weil & Durrse Including Wilendur.



I layered it with a smaller Wilendur cherry cloth from the 1950's. Notice how this generation of the print adds more blossoms.



Wilendur is known for its naturalistic representations of fruit and flowers. Could it be that the designer felt the original pattern did not include enough detail?

The first release of the HLCCA Retro Red Stripe consisted of dinner plates, teacups & saucers and mugs. The disk pitcher and juice tumblers debuted this week.







The striped pieces are joined by square Fiesta dinnerware in lemongrass and shamrock, scarlet Fiesta flatware, modern red-hemmed napkins from Pier One, resin napkin rings from Crate & Barrel and striped Libbey glassware from Target.