Reunited (and it feels so good)!

There are numerous good reasons to enjoy vintage kitchenware.  There's the knowledge that you're re-purposing and recycling items discarded before their useful lifetime and the understanding that your money is filtering through the economy on a different, sometimes even charitable, level.  There's the daydreams you can easily get whisked off to thinking of the former meals your skillet has cooked or dish has prepared.  And the thrill of the hunt, for sure.  But I get the most extreme pleasure when I piece back together a long torn apart set.

Sometimes while anthropomorphizing my dishes, I think about how lonely a misplaced bowl is separated from its manufactured brethren.  I just want to swoop in and say, "Ah ha!  I have found you!  Let me return you to your kinfolk."  And sometimes I get to.

When it comes to glassware, sets of three are always hard to think about.  I can't help but wonder what awful fate the fourth succumbed to.  Did it break?  Maybe it was lost in a move?  A while back I'd found three colorful automobile glasses: red, turquoise and yellow.  They were bright and cheerful, and scattered throughout an unmanned flea market booth about to close.  Lo and behold if I didn't spot the green one months later and miles away.

Big news too that I also finally completed my set of 1940s Pyrex Primary Bowls with the old elevated foot.  I suppose the italicization goes a bit far - I mean I haven't been looking that long.  But anyhow, my very first set back together at last:

 

When it comes to reuniting sets, I think it is part luck and part patience (and honestly, I think more of the latter).  I'd known of a yellow #404 for a while, but wasn't entirely pleased with either the condition or the price.  I'd walk by it thinking, "There you are, the last piece needed to complete this set" but had managed, for weeks, to pass it by.  Finally I gave in to temptation and splurged on the bowl, reckoning it's a decently elusive find what with the limited production and age and who only knew when I'd see another one.  So I bought it.  And my jubilation and rationalization lasted all of something like three hours until at the next place we stopped, I found another one - reasonably priced, and in better shape (so yes, I rescued that one too.  I know, I can't help myself - luckily that first one has already been re-homed to Japan so I can mark a tally in the win column for spreading the Pyrex wealth).

Just goes to show - patience always wins out.

Then you have lids.  Oh lids - you bane of my existence.  They say there is a lid for every pot but they don't tell you where this lid happens to be.  I broke my rule and purchased this Zodiac lid online, but seeing how happy he is (I think this casserole is a male, no?) back with his proper hat, I understand why rules are meant to be broken sometimes.

 

This little casserole didn't lose it's lid, but the one it had was all chipped and damaged.  Fortunately, not one but two lone lids were discovered a few days ago for a steal.  It's just one big family reunion going on over here!

So tell me, what's your happiest reunion tale? 

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