OT: Lost Arts File: Stapled Ceramic Repair.

In the spirit of the holiday season and eating on your family's fancy china, I have to share this find. This is from a set of Tiffany plates that belonged to my Grandmother so probably date from about 1930 when she got married. As you can see this one was broken and got stapled together! I had never seen this before but apparently this was a common practice into the 50's and my mom said her family house in England had a whole lot of china that was repaired this way. See On the Mend | Studio Potter for some more explanation. I love this since it's cool to repair stuff, especially nice plates like this so you still have a set, even if the host feels the need to use the broken one.

But it is amazing they were routinely making blind holes in china less than .1" thick! Makes me think of all the trickery around repairing cast iron that gets discussed on PM. As described in the stuidiopotter link, these staples definitely look like they've been formed with a hammer. He says they heated them up and they pulled the plate together upon cooling. That seems extraordinary since you'd have to get the length super accurate to get holding power. But evidently they did as this repair has lasted at least 50 years (of light use) Also of course the china could handle the staple going in red hot without breaking so that's a plus. Anyway, cool stuff.

Interesting repair. Thanks for sharing. I did a repair on a glass shade, but I did through holes with a 3/32 inch diamond drill. I put in silver wire twisted together on the inside.

Neat. Doesn't seem like it would be that difficult really as far as the length. They probably hold at the end of the 'L' so they would just make the staple a tiny smidge too tight by bending the 'L' bends a bit further and then heat to expand the center long bit and drop it in the holes. Once cool it would pull taut.

For this to work the holes obviously need to have nice straight sides or even be angled slightly inward. I can imagine trying to do this and making more of a crater than a hole so I'm impressed with that particularly.

I have heard that those spring loaded plate holders people use to hang "collectors plates" on the wall are bad for the plates. they set up stresses and after years the plate can snap just hanging with no one touching it for years.
Bill D