I need to know.

Before I get started here let me just say that this much I already know:  I am a vintage dish junkie and therefore have NO BUSINESS whatsoever prowling around the dish aisle of a Goodwill thrift store BUT once I’m in the store I feel it’s my moral obligation to check out every. single. aisle. including the one with the lame used sporting goods (deflated soccer ball or random golf clubs anyone?) and so there I was.  

Doing my civic duty in the dish aisle. In the name of junking. Which sounds an awful lot like junkie.

For the most part I kept my hands to myself but while eavesdropping on two people discussing Pyrex (free continuing ed class over in housewares!)  I spied some pretty little plates and here comes a(nother) confession:  I have become THAT PERSON. The one who whips out her phone in Goodwill to google the item in her hand before making a potentially heinous mistake involving fours of dollars by taking a pass on something that maybe she should have bought but didn’t.  Because of the fours of dollars involved.

And now I’m also that person who refers to herself in the third person.

And it was just four dollars.

I really don’t know how to explain that part of the equation. It’s not like they cost forty dollars because then PROBLEM SOLVED.

The tipping point. 

Back to the dishes. The magical, pretty dishes that had many interesting things happening. A nautical theme. Not one but two marks on the back (mad googling begins here!) and those marks involved the words ENGLAND and FAMOUS ARTISTS. Surely those are good signs. And the crazing. I love crazing. And they were pretty. And I’d never seen them before. And they were pretty.

Oh that crazing...

Hands over four dollars.

Despite my frenzied googling at the store and later again when my dishes and I got home, I still couldn’t determine specifically who the “famous artists” were and somehow not knowing disturbs me.  If I were putting the works of “famous artists” on my merchandise (and adding a second china mark specifically explaining that they were made by “famous artists”), I would say in BIG HUGE LETTERS who the “famous artists” are.

A painting by a "famous artist." 

And now I feel as though the internet is keeping secrets from me. Because everything about everything is on the internet by now, isn’t it?

I will keep looking.