Unfortunately, our planet cannot conceivably, possibly, even remotely support the reckless rampaging greed-strewn path to fat self-assured comfort taken by the West for the billions of humans in the East and South. Two wrongs do not make a right, and even if they did, the crucible will still break. China right now is the severe test-dish; I think the break-down of human enterprise will begin there and spread out around the world as fossil fuel declines and vicious wars over its control increase. Chenyu, the future could be bleak for all of us and it is probably bleakest where you are. The only thing we can do here to help is to try not to contribute to the madness. We can not buy - for example - the cheap products made in your country, the making of which is destroying your environment. We can use our own excrement to grow food. We can drive less, earn less money and generally contribute less to a mad economy.

Hi! Yes, I have an update. I decided to got native this year and raise my own seedlings. I bought some heirloom seeds from seedsavers.com and started them in the basement under florescent light. I have 9 kinds of tomatoes, Black Krim, Brandywine, Czech's Excellent Yellow, Green Zebra, Red Zebra, Opalka, Stupice, Italian Heirloom, and Gold Medal. I started 5 of each, expecting a few to die off so that I'd get 2-3 each. Well they all did great, so now I have 45 seedlings. Yikes. I've started offering some to relatives, neighbors, people at work, etc, so I think I can narrow them down to about 3 plants each. They are doing great, about 6 inches high and bushy. My only worry is the crowding. I leave them in boxes so they are easy to haul outside for the hardening and they are just growing all over each other. I just started hardening them off this week, and I should be putting some in the ground by next week some time depending on what the weather forcast looks like. I still get some nights in the 40s when the wind is off of Lake Michigan (I'm about 1/4 mile from the lake) so I'm better off waiting a bit when planting and getting the days back in October when the lake is keeping me warmer than the inland areas. The current forcast for this coming Friday night here is 43 degrees. I'm planning on getting a few other tomato seedlings from various sources. They have some Cherokee Purple down at the West Allis Farmers Market and I plan to pick up a few this weekend. I'm also going to get a few Sweet 100 and Sungold from the local greenhouse. Oh, we picked up a nice heirloom lettuce mix that's already growing well. We also have a couple of heirloom cucumber types that I'm going to seed directly soon. Japanese Climber was one, I can't remember the other. And 3 or 4 of the family pole beans that great-granny smuggled out of Slovenia. And spinach and broccoli. Yup, I had to dig up some lawn to expand the garden this year. ;) Grass is boring, anyway. 8^) Mike

Yes, this is the Lynbrook #4724. I own this exact set as well. From looking at your pictures I am missing a couple of pieces that I didn't know about, so thank you for the post. If you look on the bottom of the coffee cups, the name of the collection and number is printed. I know I know your going to be thinking you did all that research and you had it there all along, I speak from experience. The pattern identification is only printed on the coffe cups. A little more history to you occupied china - These piece were stamped "occupied" during World War II while America occupied Japan. These products were made for export purposes. It was actually a law that the pieces had to be identified as "occupied". On some of the older piece, you may see were the occupied Japan stamp is a different color than the Noritake stamp, this is because the occupied stamp had to be added to pieces that were produced before the passing of the law. After the signing of the Peace Treaty, the law was demolished; therefore, the occupied stamp was no longer used. If your coffe cups do not have the "Lynbrook 4724 stamp" will you please let me know, because mine do and I would like to be certain that they are original pieces. Thank you

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!