The Red Barn Plates

The huts we saw that day were far more rusted and rickety

It started on a motorcycle trip to upstate New York.  We weren't married yet and it was in either Poughkeepsie or Peekskill that I found the mother lode of junk. Three Quonset huts stacked to the rim with stuff, stuff, and more stuff. Open steel shelving, plastic etageres, bookcases lined up row by row with barely space to walk between, loaded down with pots and pans, glasses and knick-knacks, books and batteries, coffeepots, crockpots, boxes of cutlery, postcards, costume jewelry and just about any other thing you could think of.  Shelf after shelf after shelf, bowed by the weight of all those glorious "one-man's-trash-is-another-man's-treasure" objects.

It was then I spotted the first plate.  Even though blue isn't my color, there it was a white plate with a red barn on a mostly blue background.  I sifted through the stack of dishes and all together there were five plates, each representing a different month, each with a different red barn.  Even though barns aren't my thing they were very compelling.  They were heavy china, gold-rimmed, and I really considered getting them but they were two or three dollars each and after all, we were on a motorcycle and Manhattan was quite a ride away. And it was cold.  We had to get back on the road to be where we were going before dark, so I passed them up.  I left the Quonset hut — too soon and empty-handed.  Still, the whole ride back I marveled at this magnificent triple-mounded mausoleum of junk we'd only skimmed and I thought I'd have to go back there one day and just really DIG in.

And then it was my birthday — and my Chris surprised me with four of the plates!

March — tilling the soil

July — baling the hay

 

September — surveying the land

December — bringing in the tree

        

They were beautiful! He'd driven back up on his motorcycle and bought me those plates...though I immediately asked, "Where's the fifth?"

"What?" he asked.

"The fifth plate — there were five plates."

"No there were only four."

"You left the other one behind."

"NO! There were only four!"

"Well, maybe someone bought the other one or moved it to another stack where you didn't look, but there were five." [How ungrateful of me!]

For years I mourned that missing plate.

The plates were marked 

The Red Barn, Service Plates, designed by Dale Nichols B. Altman & Co. New York.

http://departmentstoremuseum.blogspot.com

made by Adams China in England,  First Edition limited to six hundred sets

I began trying to find out more about my plates. I knew about Altman's because I used to occasionally shop in their flagship store on Fifth Avenue and 34th Street in New York, with my mom.  Then in 1989, B. Altman & Company — which started in 1865 — went into bankruptcy and closed, after 124 years in business.  It was 1989, the year my children were born.

Then I researched regional artist Dale Nichols (1904-1995) who had a penchant for painting barns— stark, realistic barns of his Nebraska youth. And after calling Altman's and asking to speak to the oldest employee in the china dept, spoke to a gentleman who recalled that these plates were sold as decorative plates (not meant to eat on) in the 40s. 

Over the years, a plate at a time, slowly the red barn plates appeared for Valentine's, Christmas, Mother's Day and then the bonanza when the last five all were gifted at once.

August  — with its magnificent tree

           

May  — with the hay crop in orderly rows

June — with cattle grazing and dog

October — with its beautiful striped barn and...

             

January — with its gorgeous snow and star

I love my plates, these and many others I've collected over the years.  They bring me comfort and beauty and peace — and always remind me how much my husband loves me.

And — tell me, what do you collect?