A new - and modern - coffee set

We're back from a weekend in Norfolk and I've a few Norfolk posts to share with you this week. I make no apology for that, as it's a beautiful place and one of those places that I find it easy to chill out and recharge in. As usual when leaving mum and dads, I left with more than I arrived with and full of cake, which of course is never a problem.  As well as our purchases - it's rare that I'll visit Norfolk and not buy some fish at the Fish Shed in Brancaster Staithe and so take up space in mum's fridge too - there were some aquilegias, lupins and foxgloves from dad's garden, a giant lettuce he'd grown and something more unusual, a coffee set.

But not just any coffee set.

My coffee set in the dresser

This one, a Midwestern set called Plant Life, was a wedding present to my parents from my granddad, which they've hardly used (their words) since their wedding in 1958 and as I've recently developed a taste for coffee (thanks to Nespresso) when it was offered, I was thrilled to bring it home.

A coffee pot and cup and saucer

I have memories of the best dinner service coming out for special occasions as I grew up, and wanting  to be extra careful with it and not drop or damage it. I've a skill for being a tad clumsy you see, but I think I managed not to break any of this and I'm hoping that record continues. 

It's been a while though since I looked at the design more closely. I'm not sure back then that I ever really looked at it in the same way I do now. But now that I do, it makes me smile. Its images and drawings are still modern and contemporary, or at least not dated, if you prefer to think of it that way. 

A plant life coffee cup and saucers
The reverse of the coffee cups
My midwestern plant life cream jug
And a sugar bowl

And I've just the place for it too.  

midwinter modern plant life coffee set

It's now proudly sitting in my dresser, where I think it looks great. It goes nicely alongside my Le Creuset Classic orange casserole and the Norfolk-crafted earthenware noodle bowls and I love it against the duck egg blue and the wood. 

Bringing it home was the prompt I needed to spring clean the dresser's display cupboards and rejig what went where. Now it looks prettier but is still - probably more - functional, which is just as well as I've promised to put this to good use. 

Now, who's for coffee?