Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

There's a crested bowl on eBay at the moment (YESSS on which I am bidding - so please keep away!) and I am reminded of the conventions (1957) under which we were punished if we did not hold the bowl correctly (index finger over the rim, thumb and middle finger outside the rim, to balance it). In my time at Hertford (1957-1966) the crested bowls became few and far between as they were replaced by plain white ones which, in turn, were eventually (I think) replaced by plastic mugs.
Here is history in fulfulment, though I gather that much of the porcelain (whether crested or not) was destined for the scrap heap.

Plain white bowls in Horsham when I was there. Never heard of a crested one. (Sounds like a feathered bird)
No holding convention either, just trying not to get your fingers scalded. Especially when trying to carry 2 bowls, just after they had been poured from the tin jugs. Merely picking them up was hard enough, let alone trying to carry them to the top of the table without spilling any.
Mugs must be a new invention.

The mugs came in for use in house, Kerren, they were in house colours so ours were blue. I think we had the bowls in Dining Hall all the time I was there.

6s made a point of collecting crested plates from Dining Hall and replacing them with white plates from House until we got a complete collection - perhaps other houses did the same, I wouldn't know.

Katharine wrote:The mugs came in for use in house, Kerren, they were in house colours so ours were blue. I think we had the bowls in Dining Hall all the time I was there.

We still had bowls in the Dining Room when I left in 1970.

Very useful training for dealing with breakfast bowls of hot chocolate or milky coffee when travelling in France

icomefromalanddownunder wrote:We still had bowls in the Dining Room when I left in 1970.

Very useful training for dealing with breakfast bowls of hot chocolate or milky coffee when travelling in France

Very true - I amazed my homestay hostess by coping naturally, I was the first Brit she had ever hosted who could do so!

There is a thread with this on waaaaaaaay back, and apparently it was 6s who collected the crested stuff as I never saw any and Alex knew about it.

I used a mug...

Great Plum wrote:I used a mug...

So did I at university.
Couldn't work out why they had handles.
Asbestos fingertips seemed to work for me.

so did you all drink tea out of a bowl?

Looks like it. I wonder when the school discontinued the use of bowls in Dining Hall?
I am not surprised that the girls were taught how to drink their tea daintily while the boys did differently.........
If I win the eBay auction it will all come flooding back (how to hold the bowl that is, not the tea!)

we had washed-out-green coloured plastic mugs

in later years new ones were in bright colours

i have a bright green mug and plate somewhere...

Tesco Value breakfast/soup bowls were very similar, they have changed the shape slightly now and they are a bit deeper than before with more sloping sides, can still drink the milk out of the bottom though.

It was a white bowl, and incidently, it wasn't tea, it was.....

KIFF !

Strangely enough, many years later, I stopped at a roadside cafe in Southern France for breakfast, and was served delicious coffee in an identical type of bowl !

Great Plum wrote:so did you all drink tea out of a bowl?

If you can call kiff "tea" the answer is yes - and without any ornament (that seems to have been reserved for the girlies). I guess about 7 inch dia, 3 inches deep

Never had anything else in my day - tough as the proverbial old boots - you could drop them safely and no handle to break off. I don't even remember a chipped one, they were so thick.
OTOH don't drop one on your toe - not even housie shoes could protect your toes.

the taste of the tea was rather 'special' - really strong from an urn made from catering size teabags. strangely i quite like urn-tea now...