By Elinor Emery Pollard — Early American pepper pots, or casters, or muffineers (and they are all one) present an elusive quest. But their charm is great and their history interesting, for they played an important part in the daily lives of our early forebears. There is an old painting called Taste, by Gonzales Coques (1618-1684), in the National Gallery in London which shows, on a table in the background, a plain little cylindrical caster without any handle. Thus we know that as early as the beginning of the...

The Colors of Fiesta

By Maribeth Keane — I started as a collector and I’m a web designer, so I thought I would design a website from my passion. I threw it up there and people just found me and it started to take off. Fiesta is made in West Virginia, and I’m from West Virginia originally. I was a thrift store fanatic in college, and I would see this unmarked colored dishware that just really caught my eye. That was probably Riviera, because Fiesta would be marked. People would know Fiesta, but Riviera wouldn’t be marked, so...