Wild rose or Wildrose collection from Villeroy & Boch

Long time no see, well not that long, but still I feel I haven't written anything on here in ages and frankly I miss it. 

This post sparked from my desire to read everything about Wildrose collection from Villeroy&Boch and finding bits and pieces of information on websites and never the whole picture. It all started from a gift that my dear friend gifted me. I was never enamored in porcelain, but living in Luxembourg I was exposed to this culture. I have friends who started buying one pattern and now are touring the borcantes and troc shops in the search of the whole collection. I, too, send them pictures every time I find something that I know one or another collects, but I never started my own collection. I don't plan on starting one now, either, but since I was gifted these first pieces, I wanted to know everything there is to know about them.

What we know is that Wildrose or Wild rose is a porcelain collection from Villeroy&Boch inspired by, guess what?, wild roses. The handles of the cups are made to resemble a rose stem and the pieces are decorated with pink roses and green stems and leaves. My friend said that it goes well with my house and that she imagines me sipping coffee under one of the trees from one of the cups. I'm not as romantic as that but why not. I do drink coffee.

The production of these pieces started in 1968 and stopped in 2018, but were still sold since 2020 when the factory stock ended. I don't know if all the pieces, but the newer ones are microwave and dishwasher safe. If you want to see all the pieces in the Wild Rose collection, please follow this link. Also the website that I have linked offers to source pieces of this collection that you might look for. Fortunately facebook marketplace is full of pieces from this collection still, but I would advise to hurry up buying them while they are not that sought after and not that expensive, although being Villeroy&Boch they are by definition expensive.

What was I gifted is a coffee set, with a coffee pot, creamer, sugar bowl, three coffee cups and saucers, three desert plates and one big round platter. I assume it was once sold as such, because all the pieces fit nicely on the round platter. My friend also got me a candle holder because it was offered to her when she purchased the coffee set. But there are a lot of pieces if one were to seek all the collection, there are dinner, salad, bread & butter, and pasta plates, cups, mug for tea or coffee, bowls: individual, salad, vegetable, soup, oval platters, sauce boats, sugar bowl, creamer, full tea and coffee sets, tureens. I also found a round lidded box on a brocante and there is also a set of three jars on a plate, a lidded vase (more like a urn) and even a teapot warmer where one can put a candle and salt and pepper shakers and egg cups. Also there are napkins and other table related textiles featuring the same design, not sure they were produced also by Villeroy&Boch, though. On Etsy I even found vine glasses with the same pattern. Safe to say if I were to search for the whole collection I would need a bigger house and an even bigger budget.

As I've said the prices are still affordable and the condition these pieces can be found on the second hand market is good or lightly used. I plan on using mine and I assume people who are buying them are doing the same so in a couple of years I don't know if there will be pieces of as good quality. To be fair, Villeroy&Boch introduced a new collection with a rose pattern, but it is too modern for me, but I assume it is targeted towards younger generations.

This is my whole collection, it is missing one cup cause maybe on that day I had coffee in it and indeed it goes well with my house

And it goes well with my roses as well. Don't know if they are wild, well they are not, but seeing how much I care for them they are in a wild state.

I've discovered I have peonies in my garden as well and I have to say that the coffee pot will definitely be used as a vase more than a coffee pot.

My husband, who is the cook in our house, finds my little pieces and moves them so he can make food. He put the vase (coffee pot) and the candle holder together on the vitroceramic cooker and they do look good there as well.

According to the internet: "The Wildrose collection is one of Villeroy & Boch’s oldest country style interpretations." I do live in the countryside and I love the country style so maybe my dear old friend was right to give me this pattern. I have to say that I will look for maybe a whole (6 pieces) coffee set, cause often we have more than two people visiting, but I hope I will not invest that much time and money into the collection. Only time will tell.

I do plan on visiting the Villeroy&Boch Museum, I've heard it was refurbished, and maybe I will learn more about my coffee cups with roses.

What I thought it was important or maybe useful to know, is that the stamps on the back of the pieces could be brown or green for the pieces produced between 1968 and 1990, the ones produced between 1990 and 2018 have black stamps. I wonder if the older ones are microwave and dishwasher safe. I only have brown and green stamps and on the brown ones it writes that they are produced in West Germany (so before 1989) and the green ones are dishwasher safe and some are hand painted. 

Treasures from the brocante - Thank you MJP!

You guys I can't believe it's been two years since I've last posted on this blog. Thank you so, so much if you manage to find somehow this post and give me some feedback. 

So the story is simple, really. 

It's Spring time here in Arlonia (for the readers of this blog who just come to join me, Arlonia is some bits of Luxembourg, some bits of Belgium, some bits of France and some bits of Germany and the Netherlands, I could as well call it the Grande Region or the Greater Region or Benelux and France and Germany, but Arlonia, to me, sounds nicer) and the brocante (brocante is similar to thrift market, car boot sale, garage sale, second hand market, flea market, but it is the word in French) season is open. Usually in Arlonia the brocante season starts in March and finishes in October, so during the warmer months each city or town picks a Sunday to do a brocante. Don't ask me the rules of a brocante cause I don't know, who could sell, what could be sold, but what I know is that almost every Sunday there is a brocante somewhere in Arlonia. 

I stumbled on this particular brocante by pure chance, cause I was acting as a guide for some guests, we were visiting Luxembourg and in Knuedler there was this brocante. I think the guests are important as well for this particular story, because the ladies are experts in wooden furniture and craft objects and in textiles from a prestigious museum in Romania, the ASTRA Museum in Sibiu.

And as we were walking, debating what to buy and, most importantly, what to do with what we bought, my eyes fell on a cardboard box with old textiles. I always love to look through old textiles, most of them hand made.

I first saw the year, exactly 30 years older than me, and then I've examined the object. It was 5 euro, but only if you do hand embroidery or hand stitching you can quantify the amount of work that went into producing this tiny object. It is embroidered, it has lace, the cloth is prepared with hems and stitched in the shape of a pouch or maybe a pillowcase.

To me it looks like a school project.

So 4 years after the war, MJP (I like to thing it was Marie Jeanne) had to do a school project showing what she (or he) learned in the craft classes. It is well executed with attention to details, I hope MJP got a big grade on the project.

Now why did I say my guests are important?

Because the textile expert is not expert in regular Romanian textiles, but in Transylvanian Saxons textiles. And the Transylvanian Saxons used to write their name or just their initials on their clothes and on their houses and on their objects. True, this is a school project, the pouch doesn't seem to ever been used and the initials are there to show who made the school project and maybe differentiate with the others in the class, but what a nice coincidence. Moreover the Transylvanian Saxons first came from a region very close to Arlonia, way earlier than the war and 1949. BUT is still a nice coincidence.

NOW I do hope to pop back here again sooner than two years, I've forgotten how much I love to write on this blog and believe you me, in the span of two years I have plenty of topics and ideas to write about, so keep close.

As always, Raluca