3 Antique Platinum Blue Lamberton Scammell Dinner Plates 9" Trenton NJ 1931

Beautiful light blue plate crafted in a durable, heavier restaurant style manner.

Lamberton Works first opened in 1869 operating for several years before selling in 1888 to Thomas Maddock, whose family had been craftsmen and decorators for the Staffordshire Potteries in England for generations. While owned by the Maddocks, Lamberton Works produced some of the highest quality domestic and commercial china in the world.

In 1923, a former office boy, D. William Scammell, along with his five brothers, purchased the plant. Under the Scammels, the client list and variety of wares rapidly grew. Prominent hotel and restaurant customers included the Waldorf-Astoria, the William Penn, and LaSalle, in addition to Macy’s and Gimbel’s department stores.

During the heyday of luxury railroad travel, Lamberton Works created china for the New Jersey Central, Union Pacific, the Pennsylvania, New York Central, Southern Pacific and Baltimore & Ohio Railroads. It also provided its product for shipping lines including the Holland-America, the Norfolk and Washington Steamboat Co., Norwich Line, Panama Pacific Steamship and United States Lines among others.

The Scammels successfully ran the pottery company until D. William died in 1952. Largely abandoned after the Scammell China Co. closed in 1954, what remained of the old factory burned down in 1972. For the next 20 years, the Lamberton name lived on as a line of china manufactured by the Sterling China Co. of Wellsville, Ohio, which purchased the equipment and ongoing contracts from the Lamberton Works in 1954.

Lamberton Works pieces from both the Maddock and Scammell eras are much sought-after by collectors today.

Plates measure just over 9 inches in diameter.

Plates are in good condition, one has a slight manufacturing blemish on the edge, all show heavy wear to glaze finish with rubbing and utensil marks visible.