Cast-Off Crockery Is Just What They’re Looking For
From a shelf of thousands, James Allen Murphey picks up a Civil War-era covered dish and recites its history.
“It was made by Tresmanher & Vogt in France in 1864,” the 79-year-old Murphey said as he gently turned it over, noting the gold flowers hand-painted atop a delicate design embossed into the white china.
“At the time it was made, there were over 60 factories in that area of France,” Murphey said. “This pattern was probably made until the 1920s. It’s dated because the manufacturers in those days guaranteed their china against impurities for 10 years.”
In this case, it was a casserole dish. But it could have been a plate, a cup, a saucer. Murphey’s business has become a passion; he’s spent 50 years searching the world for dinner-table furnishings.
If you need a dish, he’s probably got it in his basement, upstairs, even in a barn.
“This place is unbelievable,” said Pat Wishop of Rockton, Ill., as she and Karen Swanson picked through hundreds of dishes in the basement catacombs of Murphey’s Patterns of the Past shop.
The two teachers drove to Princeton, like hundreds of other china pilgrims each year, in a quest for an obscure, long-discontinued pattern.
“I brought a dish that I’m trying to match,” Wishop said. “It’s from a set that my husband’s grandmother owned. They weren’t even sold in stores. Some of the dishes are chipped, so I’m hoping to replace them.”
She’s in luck.
Murphey has her pattern, one of a mind-boggling array of china and crystal in all colors, shapes, sizes and styles. They sit floor to ceiling on sagging shelves that snake, maze-like, through his modest shop.
Customers bring plates, pictures of dishes, scrap-paper drawings--or they utter vague descriptions of a pattern in hopes Murphey will recognize it.
He catalogues in his mind the 12,000 china patterns stored in seemingly wild disarray. Only mental maps exist for most of his stockrooms and barn.
“My father has been here living this business since the 1940s, and now he gives speeches and teaches classes on it,” said Murphey’s daughter, Jyl Lorenzana.
Murphey said he fell into the business when he was stuck with unsold china inventory after World War II.
“Then he fell in love with this business,” said Winnie Murphey, his wife and co-worker of 50 years.
If Murphey doesn’t have a particular pattern, the real hunt begins.
He will check with some of the 300 importers on both coasts who supply him with china. He may contact china salespeople, dealers or even factories overseas--many of which he has visited over the years.
Auction houses, flea markets and antique dealers are sources for china, as are other china-matching shops.
The International Assn. of Dinnerware Matchers has about 60 members, said IADM President Iris Freeman in Irving, Tex. But several hundred shops nationwide sell discontinued china patterns. Most are small and carry only certain brands of china or crystal.
“It’s a fairly new industry,” Freeman said. “A lot of people still don’t realize there are businesses who specialize in discontinued patterns.”
Patterns of the Past, about average size among the businesses, has six employees, a client list of 10,000 and annual sales of between $100,000 and $500,000.
Old china is a lucrative business that has exploded in the last five years, said Bob Page, founder of the industry Goliath: Replacements Ltd. in Greensboro, N.C. Its sales jumped from $52,000 in 1981 to $21.5 million last year.
“There’s a huge demand,” said Page, who employs 240 people and has a computerized inventory exceeding 1.6 million pieces, along with massive warehouses and even a restoration division complete with kilns.
“There’s a sentimentality involved when a bride picks out a china pattern and still thinks it’s the best ever made 25 years later,” Page said. “It’s very personal.”
Unlike Page’s, Murphey’s approach is stubbornly low-tech.
Customers compete for a single phone line to reach Murphey. Handwritten logs, not computers, track inventory.
And Lorenzana is just getting a facsimile machine installed.
