p4c9602_DailyTelegraph13.11.04

Inside track
HOUSEHOLDPLC
How to run a 21st-century home. This week: xxx xxx
RACHEL
SIMHON
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µ Read my earlier columns at
www.property.telegraph.co.uk.
DESIGNCLASSICS
In a six-part series, we tell the story
behind some iconic kitchen gadgets
THISWEEK
PUSHBOY BIN
PICTURES: ROGER TAYLOR/SIMON BROWN
WHO
At your service: Kim Cotton inspects a Royal Crown Derby teapot in Tablewhere’s storeroom. The company tracks down discontinued china
Solving the china crisis
WHAT
Broken a piece of your favourite dinner service? All is not lost, says Christopher Middleton
B
reaking one of your best
plates used to be like a
bereavement: RIP the
perfect dinner service.
But these days it is not
the end of the world.
This miracle is achieved not
through the power of prayer and
strong glue, but by enlisting the
services of one of a growing
number of companies that track
down discontinued china. Simply
tell them the Wedgwood soup
tureen or Villeroy & Boch sugar
bowl you’re looking for, and they
will find it for you. It may take a
week, it may take a month — it
could even take five years — but
the unsightly gap on the dining
table will be filled in the end.
Not that the urge to replace lost
china is merely cosmetic. “People
feel very deeply about their best
crockery,” says Helen Rush of
Chinasearch in Kenilworth (35
staff, one million pieces of china).
“These aren’t just cups and
saucers, they’re links with the
past. Very often, people’s best
dinner plates were wedding
presents, or have been handed
down by now-dead parents.
There’s a huge amount of
sentimental attachment.”
This is why china-seekers are
prepared to pay anything from £8
to £80 to replace a single lost plate
— the price is dependent not on
how large the object is, but on
how hard it is to get hold of.
“The pieces we get most
demand for are items like dinner
plates and cereal bowls,” says
Margaret Bazley of Chinamatch in
Droitwich. “This is the stuff
people actually use — and break —
on an everyday basis. The things
they only ever bring out on special
occasions, such as big vegetable
dishes, seem to survive for ever.”
Talk to people who’ve employed
china detectives and you begin to
understand the depth of feeling a
piece of crockery can arouse.
‘I
’d given up all hope,” says
Alan Robinson, a
Chinasearch customer, of his
10-year search for a lid that would
match the Royal Worcester
Poppies teapot that had been the
favourite of his late wife, Sheila
(he’d dropped the original lid a
year or so after her death). “I
contacted Royal Worcester, but
they said they’d stopped
producing that line. I went round
charity shops and china shops,
and searched everywhere. But no
one could help me.
“You can imagine my glee, then,
when I got a call to say a match
had been found. I found it really
comforting to restore the teapot to
its original state.”
Every so often, though, the
china-finding companies are
contacted by people who want not
to replenish their crockery
collection, but to get rid of it.
Divorce is often the reason. Kim
Cotton of Tablewhere in north
London says she was once
contacted by a woman who was
desperate to get shot of the dinner
service that she and her exhusband had been given as a
wedding present. “We met at a
motorway service station,” says
Mrs Cotton. “She didn’t care what
I paid her for the china, she just
wanted it out of her house.”
By contrast, some of
Tablewhere’s customers can’t get
enough plates and bowls. “Among
the gipsy community,
china is a form of
currency,” says Mrs
Cotton. “The pattern
MOSTWANTED
Recognise these patterns? If
you’ve got pieces from these
crockery ranges (and they’re in
good condition), the china-finding
companies would like to buy them.
Prices are for if you’re selling; if
you’re buying, they can be two or
three times as much.
µRoyal Doulton Etude
Soup or cereal bowl, £8
µPoole Cranbourne
Dinner plate, £8
µMasons Fruit Basket (right)
Teacup and saucer, £8-£10
µVilleroy & Boch Siena
Lidded vegetable tureen, £40
µ Masons Regency (top right)
Soup tureen, £50-£80
µPrices supplied by
Chinasearch.
‘
I found it
really
comforting
to restore
the teapot to
its original
state
’
It is only the wealthy who can afford
to throw things away, so the world
had no need of bins until the early
20th century. Food scraps were
boiled for chicken feed, durables
were passed on to the next
generation, broken things were
fixed, and those items that had no
further use were burnt.
With the stirrings of consumer
culture, people needed somewhere
to throw all the packaging, paper
and things nobody could be
bothered to mend. Sam Hammer
from Pennsylvania reputedly
invented an early bin, the Push Can,
in 1920. Originally designed for the
catering trade, it quickly found a
home in American kitchens.
But it wasn’t until the 1970s that
the design became widely
recognised as a symbol of America —
and that was down to a German
student, Egbert Neuhaus. While
studying in Texas, he spotted the bin
and loved the design. He took one
home to his father’s metalware
company, Westermann, which had
begun in Arnsberg in 1867 making
coffee flasks for miners.
they go for is Royal Crown Derby
Old Imari; it’s very ornate, and
very expensive, too. A new soup
tureen can cost as much as £1,000,
and be handed down through the
family.”
T
he trouble is, of course, that
when a popular pattern is
discontinued, collectors are
left high and dry if a prized piece
gets broken. This is why china
finders stockpile designs.
“We’re currently buying up
Wedgwood Candlelight,” says Mrs
Cotton, who hit the headlines in
the 1980s when she was paid to be
Britain’s first surrogate mother.
She says the china-finding
business is a less controversial
way of making money, but not
without its uncertainties. “You
always take a bit of a gamble when
you buy in lots of one particular
pattern. In this case,
we’ve already got lots
of orders from people
who’ve heard that the
line is being
discontinued,” she says.
There are plenty of
people out there who will move
heaven and earth to get the dinner
plate they’ve set their heart on.
µ Chinamatch (01905 391250;
www.chinamatch.uk.com);
Chinasearch (01926 512402;
www.chinasearch.
uk.com); Tablewhere
(020 8631 6111;
www.tablewhere.co.uk).
The Arnsberg team thought they
could improve on the original
design, and set about applying some
German efficiency to the problem.
The stocky shape was
lengthened so that it
looked more in
proportion, the flap
was altered and the
body was
fashioned from
scratch-resistant
stainless steel
rather than the
traditional
chrome plate.
Little details
were added, such
as a rubber base
ring to protect the
floor from
scratches, an
inner plastic ring
to make sure the
rubbish landed in
the right place,
and a natty way of
securing plastic
bags so they
couldn’t be seen
from the outside.
The Pushboy,
part of the Wesco
brand, was an
immediate hit,
and now sells in
35 countries.
But what do the Americans think
of the German-made all-American
trash can? They love it: the Pushboy
is one of the biggest-selling quality
bins in the US. In fact, some
catalogues have proudly but
erroneously displayed it with a
“Made in America” sticker.
WHERE
Westermann has been making
waste bins since the 1920s, but
after the fall of the Berlin Wall in
1989 it became one of the first
companies to move east, transferring
production to Schwarzenberg. The
whole Wesco range is made there —
much of it with a retro American
theme — under the direction of
Egbert Neuhaus, now the
managing director.
There’s the Baseboy, which was
based on 1950s drawings of a pedal
bin unearthed during a clear-out at
the factory in 1998; the Spaceboy, a
rocket-shaped bin inspired by Egbert
Neuhaus’s visit to Cape Canaveral,
and the Kickboy. Then there’s the
stars and stripes ironing-board that,
sales manager Alfred Becker
observes ruefully, doesn’t sell too
well in Europe these days.
WHY
It seems fitting that the classic bin
was first made in America,
where the throwaway
culture began (each
American now throws
away almost one ton
of rubbish every
year).
The Pushboy’s
design follows
every
architectural rule:
its proportions
are perfect, it
looks retro as well
as modern, and its
form exactly
follows its
function. Which is
a fancy way of
saying that
because of its
push-flap at hip
height, it cleverly
takes advantage of
the instinctive way
we throw away
rubbish by
stretching out our
arm and pushing
it away.
Rachel Carlyle
READEROFFER
Weekend readers can buy a Pushboy bin for
£175, in silver, almond, black or blue. It
comes with a free Rollboy, a unit on castors
that allows it to be pushed around the
room, worth £40. P & p £XX per order. To
order, call 0845 166 4233 or write to
Telegraph Design Classics Offer, PO Box 6,
Kettering, Northants NN15 5JW, enclosing
a cheque payable to Telegraph Classics
Offer, or your Visa/MasterCard/Maestro/
Switch card number and expiry date, plus
delivery address and daytime telephone
number. Quote reference TXX. Delivery will
be within 14 to 21 days. Offer open to UK
mainland readers only, subject to
availability, which is finite.