It's been a solid six months and we're still undecided about what color to paint our bathroom. For awhile, a rich sky blue with white trim was in the works, but now we're not so sure. Since the bathroom still has a lot of '70s details from when it was last remodeled; maybe it's better to stick to a color palette that is rooted in that era, but updating it by changing one of the accent colors...? To get inspired, we perused Flickr and found an awesome collection of photographs by H is for Home of vintage tea sets flaunting some color combinations we hadn't even considered. Take a look at our favorites after the jump...
Color Combo Inspiration: Vintage Tea Sets
Pumpkin, Dark Green, and white with chocolate accents.
Black, brown and white.
Robin's egg blue and white with gold accents.
Pink and taupe-y, muted gold. We're not huge fans of the gold (it's sort of borderline avocado...), so we'd probably update it with either a richer brown tone or a lighter beige color.
Yellow, white, and indigo blue with pink accents.
Teal, yellow-green, and white
Caramel brown, blue-grey, and cream
Red, white and black
(Images: H is for Home's Flickr)
Tags
inspiration, vintage, color combo, 70s, tea setsRelated Links
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We had the teal, olive green and white set growing up. I can remember my mom drinking her sanka coffee out of that cup.
You will notice all the vintage cups are smaller tea cup size that people drank their coffee out of compared to today with the big mugs that is the norm
view LoriSF's profile
I Love the look of the stackable ones. They're a normal size for coffee too.
view Classic CC-40's profile
Does any one have good resources for buying these? I have a great Denby set (saddly living in my parents house), but I'd love to get a few more pieces or a new set.
view Christal's profile
my mum had the caramel brown, blue-grey and cream set. we still use the biscuit barrel and side plates, tho they are all really chipped, she has the whole set, we just dont use it.
view zhenpoo's profile
I notice that the cups are smaller. But most people these days make a mug not a pot of tea.
view 42rocky's profile
Ebay is usually a good place to start looking for odd pieces of vintage china (especially if you know the name of the pattern). Sometimes you can find interesting stuff on Etsy too.
view slowdown's profile
I've noticed vintage cups are smaller, too; I've even noticed a trend that the smaller the cups, the older they tend to be. I'd always found 'one lump or two' to be an odd question until I figured this out - one lump is actually enough to sweeten a tiny cup of tea, and two lumps might even be overkill.
Now that I think of it, though, most Asian teacups are still small, with the exception of the zhong (a lidded cup, often with its own strainer) which is usually 12 or more oz.
My guess is that back in the day, you actually brewed a pot of tea and sat down with a few other people to drink it (the zhong was kind of a working man's cup to begin with). Now we have our beverages alone and on the go, and having more beverage in fewer containers seems sensible.
(off to get some hot water in my giganto mug)
view whytephoenix's profile