Sunday 10 April 2011

✴ we will repair to our rooms...and consume our fruit in solitude

One of my favourite scenes in Cranford {the BBC adaptation, it only merits a few lines in the book} is the evening when, by candlelight, the sisters Miss Matty and Miss Deborah together with their guest Mary Smith, sit around the table to eat the oranges that Mary has brought for them. They discuss their preferred ways to eat an orange {which seems such an exotic treat for them all} and after much debate, Miss Deborah decides that the act of sucking juice from such an altogether messy fruit is far too unladylike and vulgar and that they had best eat their oranges each of them in their own rooms out of sight from one another. Brilliant.
What on earth would Miss Deborah make of us ladies today. Constantly eating on the go. Shoving a sandwich in as we nip round the house with a hoover....I'll admit to often having a packet of crisps open in my pocket while out shopping....an utter disgrace, I know.
Anyway, I spotted these transferware pieces in my local charity shop during the week. I have a bit of a weakness for transferware and I'm starting to gather an eclectic mish mash of pieces, like this blue, and this green. It's just lovely don't you think? I can so imagine the Jenkyns ladies eating their oranges off such a plate and dish as these. In their own rooms, of course.
Having just had a few weeks of a cough and cold I've been eating a lot of oranges, and Miss Deborah is so very right..."Consuming them is a most incommodious business".
{ red transferware dish £2 and plate £1.50}
more Flea Market Finds here

11 comments:

  1. Love these photos! Just gorgeous. I didn't catch Cranford when it was on TV here but I can just picture it all :) Hope your cold is better soon. K

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  2. Gorgeous plates and a great post. I love Elizabeth Gaskell - when I read Cranford I never wanted it to end. Everything was so finely drawn that it equated it to time travel.

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  3. What a fabulous way to eat fruit. So much for sitting around the table and enjoying family dining!

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  4. glorious pictures - great post!

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  5. i immediately recognized the quote from the scene. i'm admitting it's about the only scene i do remember, i let go of the series sometime after that, i don't exactly know why, perhaps on too late, because of the hour difference?
    i hear dench's voice too, she's a heavenly creamy, english voice anyway...
    and ha yes! transferware... we have loads of them around here. some are so dreamy, and flemish, but probably also trielessly english (landscaped). you've made a stunning photo session of it. oranges and plates!
    n♥

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  6. love the oranges. love the orange orange-iness on the pink plates. love the pink plates, with their old-fashionedness. love that we today have something called a 'slurpie' - oh how far we've come ...

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  7. Haha, such wonderful quotes. Eating an orange is a rather vulgar activity to do in company I suppose ... I wouldn't fit well within such a refined society - I'm a perpetual snacker and eater-on-the-go too.

    And don't even get me started on the horrors of eating corn off the cob at a dinner party ... ;)

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  8. Do you mean this scene? :P http://youtu.be/6eofyiE5XxA

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  9. this is coincidential. i've landed back on this post through cybersurf.
    i have finished watching CRANFORD by now, and fully enjoyed it, oranges included.
    [and i see you have stopped blogging! what happened?]
    feel free not to answer this perhaps prying question.
    kind regards,
    n♥

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