On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 14:34:17 GMT, "Kris Baker"
wrote:


"Tony Cooper" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 05 Aug 2003 02:25:30 GMT, "Kris Baker"
wrote:

The traditional tea and coffee service is five pieces: tea pot,
coffee pot, creamer, sugar and tray.

Yes, we know that.

Who is "we"? You may, but the owner can't find the silver marks, let
alone necessarily know what the trad set is. I just thought I'd
mention it.

He found the markings. This is a case where the
item is so low-end, what you see is what you get.


We disagree on what is "low-end". Real low-end is a china teapot made
by someone in one of those paint-and-fire-it-yourself shops that is
hand-painted with flowers that look like mutant posies that grew in
Hiroshima in the late 1940s, a music box in the base that plays "Tea
For Two", a wobbly bottom, and a spout like a leaker hose. That, and
a creamer that is shaped like a cow vomiting half-and-half and a sugar
bowl in the form of a bull's scrotum. Put them on a metal tray with a
lithograph of Elvis in a white suit with sequins, and you have
"low-end".

A silver-plate service is sophisticated compared to this, provided
that you have a white living room suite with clear plastic slip-covers
and a huge Capi de Monte lamp with a fringed shade on a recoco lamp
table in the picture window. You can sit and watch the silver-plate
grow tarnish. It's like watching a lava lamp.