The ingenious story of how Fiestaware invaded the Baby Boomer kitchen

My mother ripped off the wrapping paper and dug through the packing peanuts. She pulled out a stack of plates.

“Oh, thanks,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” I replied.

Then from across the room I saw her turn to my stepdad and whisper something.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Are they the wrong color?”

“It’s okay,” my mom forced a smile. “I can probably use them.”

She’d added Fiestaware luncheon plates to her Christmas list the month before. I cheerfully logged on Amazon and bought six of them. Easy peasy. Turns out, I’d selected the wrong color, a grievous error if you know anything about Fiestaware and its die-hard collectors.

My mom wanted turquoise, one of 47 colors the Fiestaware brand has introduced since 1936. Whether a customer collects one color or all 47 is, by now, a serious business. For some people, it’s an entire lifestyle.

With tens of thousands of social media followers, museum exhibits, conventions, and a mammoth cottage industry of antiques, Fiestaware represents a bonafide movement. It’s the most collected brand of china in the U.S., according to The New York Times. And it’s all thanks to Baby Boomers, whose buying power turned around a failing brand in the mid 1980s.

Fiestaware was the brainchild of Frederick Rhead, then design director of the Homer Laughlin China Company out of Newell, West Virginia. He imagined servingware that was durable and everyday yet cheery — the type of plates one would be proud to serve guests. The result was pottery with concentric circles in an Art Deco design. But what made Fiestaware special was its glazes, which came in red, blue, green, yellow, and old ivory. Turquoise was added two years later.

“This is what will be good for the Depression. People need to brighten up their table and have something to be happy about,” said Homer Laughlin owner William Wells in 1936.

It worked. The inexpensive china was a hit. Customers were tired of stuffy, fragile, all-white bone china they could only use on special occasions. A 24-place Fiesta setting cost about $11 in the 1930s. Payment plans allowed people to contribute $1 or $0.50 per week to the total cost.

By its second year, Fiesta had produced more than 1 million pieces.

Sales dipped a bit during World War II, but the company released special pieces that reflected dining trends of the time. (Onion soup bowls and candy dishes are particularly sought after today.) In the 1950s, changing home decor meant discontinuing blue, green, and old ivory and replacing them with rose, gray, forest, and chartreuse. A last-ditch attempt to revive sales meant tweaking design in 1969, and introducing avocado green and burnt gold colors. The earth tones weren’t enough, and Fiestaware was retired at the end of 1972.

It was only a few years too soon. The 1970s saw a new appreciation for Art Deco design, whereupon the secondary market began to clamor for used Fiesta items. Resale prices shot up. At the same time, the first massive wave of Baby Boomers were getting married and stocking their kitchens. Many of them wanted the dishes they had grown up with.

In 1986 — the 50th anniversary of the line — Fiesta was re-released in all-new colors. Not only was Homer Laughlin’s timing right, the company had been watching the collector’s market for over a decade. They finally knew how to play the game.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Fiestaware honed and perfected its strategy of limiting supply and teasing special editions.

The best example may be the green glaze Fiesta introduced in 1959, at the time to a lukewarm market. This shade was slightly darker than the lighter green from its original line, more of a kelly or tractor green. Collectors eventually called it “medium green.” Now it’s the most sought after color on the antique circuit. Pieces can fetch over $1,000 each. And Fiestaware hasn’t released the color since.

In 1997, Fiesta partnered with Bloomingdale’s for a special sapphire color. In 2002, a turquoise onion soup bowl sold for $8,800 on Ebay, according to a New York Times report. Two mixing bowl lids sold for $35,000. At a current exhibition at the West Virginia Culture Center, one raspberry-colored bowl on display is valued at $20,000. The pieces “inspire frenzy,” said The Times.

“It’s the Madonna of dinnerware,” wrote style magazine Echoes Report in the mid 90s. “Scarcely content with just sitting there, it screams for attention.”

In 1995, Newsday reported that one Fiesta fan repainted his Brooklyn kitchen cobalt blue to match his dishes. He drank his coffee out of the red mugs, “because black coffee looks good against the glaze.”

Today, aficionados flood social media with questions and tips. Fiesta’s Facebook page has over 56,000 likes and 55,000 followers. Many appear to be middle class white women, some military wives, and a few young women sharing memories about their grandmothers’ colorful table settings.

Fans travel to the factory from hundreds of miles away, or attend the annual Fiestaware conference in Pittsburgh, where they pressure staff to produce retired items, like an old relish tray. Web users operate message boards where they vote on best Fiesta color (there have been 47 total over the past 81 years), test each other’s trivia, and share stories.

“The most common thing I hear is, ‘My grandmother had one of those,’” said Sales Director Dave Conley. The company is old enough now to bank on nostalgia. At one point it sold a children’s “My First Fiesta Tea Set.” You can buy it on collector sites now for about $280.

And we’re not just talking a statement piece here and there. On YouTube, people spend years compiling complete Fiesta kitchens: plates, mugs, carafes, salt and pepper shakers, platters, mixing bowls, gravy boats, tiered servers, casserole dishes, loaf pans, cookie jars, spoon rests, and many more.

Last year, Fiesta celebrated its 80th anniversary with a commemorative pitcher (limit two per customer), a holiday print, and its color of the year, a wine-purple it crowned “claret.” For weeks the company teased 2017’s top secret color, this time a chipper yellow called “daffodil.” The annual #FiestaNewColor campaign capitalizes on what the brand is best at: hype, tucked inside a cozy sweater of American history and home cookin’.

Still, fans are biting their nails for hot pink, which incidentally, is my mom’s favorite color.