Franciscan Coronado Aqua

So because I'm in that kind of a mood, will tell this strange story.

Back in the late 80s, early 90s, I was raising five children, two mine and three of their cousins. We were about to move into a new home and I needed things to supplement what I had in storage. One day I was driving by a yard sale and stopped to look. Almost everything they were selling was vintage, interesting and attractive, so I bought several things, furniture, dishes, and other decorative and useful stuff. Among the things I bought were three cups with double handles, those in the first photo, hallmark in the second photo. I loved the blue color enhanced by the beautiful swirl pattern. There were other vintage unrelated pieces I bought in that color, so I eventually grouped and displayed all those blue things together on a shelf in my kitchen. Fast forward about twenty or more years and I am clearing out my gran's house after a fire. I kept as much as I could, including old china and vintage silverware, a lot of things she had in her cabinets. There were three teapots in particular that I brought to my house and put into my living room display cabinet. Another bunch of years go by and one day out of curiosity as I'm dusting my kitchen shelves, I decide to figure out why the blue cups have two handles. The google machine informs me they are cream soup cups. Looking into the hallmark, I found they were Franciscan Coronado Aqua, 1936 - 1954. As I was looking at the pieces in my hand and on the search page, something about the pattern struck me as familiar. It suddenly dawned on me, and I went to the cabinet in the living room: sure enough, one of the teapots from my gran's house was the Franciscan Coronado Aqua teapot! All these years in the same house but in different spaces and I never knew! I bought those soup cups without remembering that my grandmother had the teapot on display in her cabinet which surely I had seen most of my life, and still didn't put the two together even when the teapot came to live with me in my house. There's no real point to this story, just kinda wild the way the mind works, the things it shuts out, or seems to, or maybe the things we choose not to remember. Subsequently, I bought some teacups, saucers, and bread plates, so I have a small set now of this lovely vintage pattern, and intend to fill out and complete with more pieces over time. The teapot and additions are in the third photo, teapot hallmark in the fourth photo. Thanks for looking.