Dear N.J.R.: It is hard to imagine a time when indoor plumbing was not found in most houses, and if there was running water inside the house it was probably limited to the kitchen. Then, people washed, shaved and brushed their teeth in their bedrooms and to accomplish these ablutions they needed the necessary equipment.
The set belonging to N.J.R. is nearly complete, with a large bowl and pitcher, a small pitcher, a toothbrush holder and a soap dish with the inside liner. This grouping appears to be missing the slop jar (after the wash-up was finished, the dirty water was transferred into the slop jar for disposal) and there may very well have been a matching chamber pot.
The maker of this set is F. Winkle and Company, a rather obscure company that operated the Colonial Pottery in Stoke, Staffordshire, England, from 1890 to 1931.
Staffordshire, incidentally, is the principal pottery-making region in England, and it is located east of Wales and southeast of Liverpool.
Stoke is one of the major manufacturing centers in this region, along with Burslem of Royal Doulton and Wedgwood fame and Longport, home of Davenport and Aynsley. In addition to the obscure Colonial Pottery, Stoke is home to Minton and many other potteries including Ridgeway Potteries Ltd., which acquired F. Winkle and Company in 1931.
The mark found on N.J.R.'s chamber set is one of the ones first used by the company in 1890 and it was in use on their wares until 1925. This means that N.J.R.'s items could have been made anytime within this 35-year period, but we believe this particular set is circa 1900.
Chamber sets were very popular some years ago, when it seemed that every bedroom in every restored late-19th-century house and every modern bedroom furnished with Victorian furniture had to have one of these in order to seem authentic. Like the spinning wheel, though, these sets became something of a cliche in the antiques world, and this, plus their wide availability, have kept their value rather modest in most cases.
We receive a lot of letters about these sets, but few of them are as attractive as this one. The blue-and-white color scheme has great appeal to collectors, and the full-blown flowers make for a very attractive design. Only a limited number of these sets have survived in perfect condition (no chips, no hairline cracks) because they received such heavy everyday usage.
If N.J.R.'s set is really one of the lucky few with no damage, its insurance replacement value is between $600 and $800.
(Helaine Fendelman and Joe Rosson are the authors of Treasures in Your Attic . Questions can by mailed to them at PO Box 12208, Knoxville, TN 37912-0208.)
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