JaneyZee's Fiesta Pages
Vintage and New Fiesta in Tropical Colors
The song is called Fiesta !!

|| Fiesta Collection || Links ||

I was first drawn to Fiesta dinnerware when I saw a collection of new Fiesta at a friend's house in 1996, perfectly displayed in a homemade cabinet. The new colors of Fiesta are gorgeous and have been in production since 1986. I especially like the tropical hues - sunflower, rose, turquoise, seamist green, apricot, persimmon and chartreuse. I have pieces in most of the colors they've made since 1986 but I love those lighter, tropical colors the best.

If you've never seen Fiesta, it's the colorful dinnerware with the Fiesta dancing lady logo and is sold in it's current incarnation in department stores and catalogs all over the USA. The original colors, which are now quite collectible, came out in 1936 and were in production in varying colors until 1973. In 1986, the 50th anniversary of the birth of Fiesta, the Homer Laughlin China (HLC) Company came out with new colors and Fiesta became popular again. Collecting the vintage colors has become very popular too, so much so that I can't afford much of it anymore. I wish I had started my collection when I lived near the Homer Laughlin factory but I had never seen Fiesta, that I can remember, until I saw it at my friend's house that day in 1996.

MY FIESTA COLLECTION

As a new collector, I bought several place settings and some of my first vintage pieces while surfing the web, plus some discontinued new pieces and colors. I was lucky to get a place setting in the limited run color of lilac before the prices went thru the roof. Retail stores are also a great place to look for new Fiesta. I bought a little bit of the Quatra striped pattern, an exclusive at Macy's, and received jumbo mugs and a serving platter in the exclusive Bloomingdale's sapphire color as a gift one Christmas (examples of both pictured above).

When Warner Brothers came out with Looney Tunes decals on Fiesta pieces, I don't think they knew what to expect from all of the Fiesta Fanatics in the world. They must have been overcome with orders! In my collection there are plates depicting Sylvester, Tweety and Daffy, and I have the creamer/sugar combo with Pepe LePew and his girlfriend on them. Another decaled piece of Fiesta I have is a 1955 Calendar Plate, bought in honor of my birth year. I would love to get some of the decaled Christmas Fiesta (maybe I should put that on my wish list for Santa) since I already have Fiesta ornaments which I display at Christmas.

I try to be creative in how I display my dinnerware. My small pie bird collection is in, what else, a persimmon pie baker, and I store all my cooking utensils in disk pitchers. Occasionally I put cut flowers in a Fiesta mug. It's fun to mix up the colors when displaying the dishes, see what new combinations I can come up with. That's the beauty of Fiesta, it all goes together and adds wonderful splashes of color to my kitchen.

Fiesta fits well on a refrigerator too. It's a good place for the overflow of Fiesta when I run out of shelf space. At one point, I had three Fiesta Collector's Quarterly exclusive shelf signs displayed with all of my napkin holders and three pitchers (one apricot carafe, one persimmon carafe, and a turquoise 60th anniversary disk pitcher) plus Fiesta go-along candles in apricot tripod candle holders.

I also collect flamingos so the Moon over Miami pieces were a natural for me to buy. These black pieces have a pink flamingo wading in the water with a silvery moon rising behind it fired onto them. They are gorgeous and they mix in just fine with my other patterns and styles. A special purchase was the 1898-1998 Burdine's department store anniversary pitcher - Burdines was a local department store that was changed into Macy's in 2004 so having that pitcher is more memorable now. And for my Halloween wedding anniversary, I ordered some of the Halloween design - persimmon with jack-o-lantern faces on them.

HLC keeps coming out with new colors so I guess I have a lot more shopping to do!!

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