I’m trying to identify a pattern for some china that my mother-in-law has. The mark on the back is K&A Krautheim, Selb Bavaria, Germany, but unlike most of the other K&A pieces I see online, there’s no pattern name on the back. We believe that these were given to her by her mother, although it’s unclear when. Almost certainly before the 1950s when she came to the US from Germany, but we’re just not sure.
The closest pattern that I’ve been able to find is Tanglewood, but all those pieces appear to have that name on the back which hers doesn’t. And the flower isn’t quite the same.
Any suggestions on how to identify this and get a sense for value would be greatly appreciated!
EDIT: Since pictures don’t appear to work on this site, I posted some here: https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B1ZG0ehgLGupHoT
Sorry, this site does not alert uses when comments (instead of replies) are left so I only now saw your question.
Following WW2 the Allies stationed their troops inside Germany and most barracks included a larger on-site store (inside barracks boundaries, therefore declared Allied soil) where soldiers and personnel could purchase products from home instead having to rely on local markets. Soldiers received payments in their usual homeland currency and would normally have to run through currency exchange; also German shop closing hours were restricted, often shutting out shift workers or soldiers. Anyway, the assortment of those stores also included German products which were cheaper on-site as purchased locally due to the corresponding tax laws. Some items were also subsidized as the Marshall Plan sought to support and provide for the German market so that the ruined economy could restart.
The British Army called these “NAAFI stores”, the US Army had “PX stores” (for “Post Exchange”), the Air Force calls them Base Exchange (BX), others are Navy Exchange (NEX), Marine Corps Exchange (MCX) or Coast Guard Exchange (CGX).
Patterns sold via PX/NAAFI on the other hand often included the English name. As mentioned the regular German edition was normally sold without a name, both for domestic or regular export sale.
You should visually check sites like Replacements.com because chances are that your pattern never had a name but a pattern code. Hold in mind that most German producers for various reasons simply did not name their patterns, leaving this to importers, distributors and the like. Exceptions were made when producers *directly* sold goods via the US PX or UK NAAFI stores in Germany; this can be seen with Krautheim, Edelstein, et cetera.
In short: pattern name included means PX/NAAFI sale. Name NOT included means domestic / regular export. In both cases the production period was between 1949 and 1977.
Thanks for the reply. I did check replacements.com, including trying their identification service. They weren’t able to identify it and I wasn’t able to find an exact match for the style.
Pardon my ignorance, but what is a PX/NAAFI sale?
Is there a trick to uploading images? The image shows when I’m composing but then I get a broken image icon after it posts.
Is there a trick to uploading images? The image shows when I’m composing but then I get a broken image icon after it posts.