I have lot of books but each just has few examples such as "Kovels' Depression Glass & American Dinnerware Price List 3rd edition. Turn to dinnerware section & Newcor not listed at all. That just means Ralph & Terry Kovel had to limit their listings to most popular or ones they were familiar with including list of factories(2 1/2 pages) & when they were in business. So it covers a lot of dishes & in alphabetical form it has some black & white pics of various patterns but when you get to American Modern by Russel Wright it gives the backstamp along with 2 pics. Some it gives the backstamp & no pic so if you have El Patio by Fransciscan all you get is 7 colors listed with 1 or more prices to give you idea of what it was worth when book published. A lot of Judith Miller books are in Antique section at bookstore but that is English stuff so unless your parents came from England & you inherited a house full of English antiques they would probably not be anything you would find much of unless you live where most people came from England. Check out library & see what books they have & also the reference section of your library & see what books they have & look them over. I have a couple of books I bought in a hurry & they mostly just have 1 pic per page so you get 350 pieces of glass & nice if you have some otherwise kind of waste of money(The Knopf Collector' Guides to American Antiques")but tell you about each company & when they were in business so could be valuable if just learning. Knopf's Pottery & porcelain has an index so I looked & no Newcor listed. Official price guides by House of Collectibles has no index but they have all the Lenox plate borders, lots of backstamps & table of contents in the front, Newcor not included in 1995 edition. So you have to be sure of what you are buying. Print this off & you can see if book measures up. Just because a pattern isn't in a book does not mean it isn't collectible, it just wasn't popular or readily available to the authors. Sometimes better to just search Internet for an item or ask here!! Good Luck!

Thank you all for your help. We suspected it was a tray for sugar cubes, but we also didn't know when sugar cubes came into existence, so we weren't sure. Linda--Grandma initialed and dated some of the pieces--she painted them in 1919. She spent an extra year in high school, studying music and china painting, before she could go to college (the college wouldn't accept her until she was 18). She painted 20 place settings of china with her family coat of arms--bouillon cups, asparagus plates, soup tureens, ramekins--just about every piece of china you can think of. This chocolate set is in the same colors as the china, but only the cups and saucers are by the same manufacturer. In addition, she did lots of little pieces, like salt and pepper shakers, a beautiful blue and gold demitasse set and this chocolate set. The tray has no mark at all. The cups and saucers have Vignaud Limoges. The pitcher has an almost completely worn away mark--it's not Limoges, I don't think, but what it is isn't clear. It's an artist's palette, intersecting a circle with a script capital L (at least I think it's an L). Underneath, there is a word, but most of the letters have partly worn off. I think there are six or seven letters. The last letter is probably K.

Linda, Sorry, I didn't think to take photos while we were packing and now everything is packed away in storage. I looked online to see if I could find some examples of the markings that were on the back, but I didn't see any. Oh well. I know the staining is not part of the pattern because it isn't on all of the pieces, and my MIL remembers this china from her teenage years and says it wasn't like that back then. But thank you for responding and trying to help. :) Luvstocraft, I will definitely try that when we unpack it. Thanks for the suggestion. :) Stumpy

C&F stands for Cochran and Fleming, doing business 1896-1920. Rowena is most likely the pattern name. I did not find any examples of your china. Do you have a set of this china or just one plate?