Celery? Dish/Tray marked W. C. Co

by Rebecca
(Kalamazoo, MI)

I’ve been trying to research this dish (tray or plate) on and off for about 10 years now, I inherited this beautiful piece from my great grandmother who lived in southwest Michigan. This dish came from the downtown house. My great aunt passed away last fall and I inherited all the china from the farm, my daughters and I have really enjoyed researching these items and learning more about the history of our family. We’ve had a ton of fun reading the newspapers from the last 90 years, I truly wish we could purchase some of those old cars for $200 and there are a lot of cows for sale. We are trying to decide which items to keep and which ones to let go, in the process of trying to identify some of the newest inherited items I pulled this dish out of my china cabinet and had my oldest daughter try to find it, she really needed something to stump her because she’s been beating the rest of us in china items identified and we can’t figure out why she is so good at it. This great idea of mine has totally backfired because she couldn’t find it but came across your site, she has search through all the pages on this site, she still wasn’t able to identify the company that made this item, nor the country. My great grandfather tuned pianos and at times he was paid in money and other times it was traded in items, readying through his diaries have been very entertaining but

it has made identifying these items even harder. My great-great-great grandfather travel here from Germany by himself, through his diaries we know that he left behind a sister and brother, along with his parents. The property that this came from has been in our family for over 150 years, some items were moved back and forth from the downtown house and the farm, on the farm there were horses raised, dairy cows milked, and chickens raised. On the bottom this item is marked W. C. Co. this mark is either in silver, gray, or a faded black. There are no other markings or in prints that we can find, there is very slight crazing on the bottom of the dish where it sits, we can’t find any other areas that have crazed, there are no chips. I believe this is a celery dish or tray, it has a very high gloss, the green/yellow outside edge has an iridescent shiny look, the multiple flowers in the center are done in blue with green foliage and on the front at both sides are a gold design, I’ve included this design in one of the pictures. We have identified other pieces of china from the mid 1850s, 1889 and 1883 on up, we also have pieces that have no mark on the bottom. These pieces will probably never be identified at this stage. I would love to learn anything we can about this items, what country it was made and the manufacturer, along with what it was used for, thank you for your time.