Noritake Blue Hill 2482, One of Noritake's Best Known Discontinued Patterns

Some discontinued patterns need introducing.

Noritake Blue Hill 2482 usually does not.

For anyone who has spent much time around replacement china in Britain, Blue Hill is one of those patterns that seems to turn up again and again. Dinner services inherited from parents, wedding china bought in the 1970s and 1980s, cupboards containing half a tea service and the inevitable collection with one dinner plate missing.

It is certainly one of the Noritake patterns we encounter most regularly at MrPottery, and probably one of the names customers recognise most readily.

That familiarity is not particularly surprising.

Blue Hill was produced from 1973 until 1996, giving it more than two decades in which to find its way into British homes.

Blue Hill, Pattern Number 2482

The full identification is Noritake Blue Hill 2482.

The design combines a broad blue floral border with softer grey-blue foliage on a pale ground, finished with fine platinum coloured trim.

The result sits somewhere between formal and everyday.

It is decorative enough to feel like a proper dinner service, particularly with the metallic edging, but the blue floral border is restrained enough that it never becomes excessively ornate.

That balance probably explains a great deal of its longevity.

Twenty Three Years Is a Long Time for a Dinner Service

Blue Hill appeared in 1973 and remained in production until 1996.

That means somebody could have bought a Blue Hill dinner service when Britain was still living through the three day week and still have been able to buy new matching pieces when the Spice Girls were topping the charts.

Tableware fashions changed considerably during those years.

The 1970s embraced strong colour, earthy stoneware and bold decoration. The 1980s brought another wave of florals, pastels and coordinated kitchen ranges. By the 1990s, much everyday tableware was becoming noticeably simpler.

Blue Hill somehow survived all three.

It never relied too heavily on one particular fashion, which allowed it to remain recognisable without feeling tied completely to a single decade.

A Japanese Company Making Western Tableware

Blue Hill also sits within a much longer Noritake story.

The company traces its origins to the beginning of the twentieth century, when its founders set out to manufacture high quality Western-style tableware in Japan for international markets.

After years of experimentation, Noritake completed Japan's first domestically produced Western-style dinner service in 1914.

Export became central to the company's success, and during the following decades the Noritake name became familiar in homes far beyond Japan.

By the time Blue Hill arrived in the 1970s, Noritake was already an established international tableware manufacturer with enormous experience designing dinner services for Western markets.

Why Blue Hill Worked So Well in Britain

There is something about Blue Hill that sits very comfortably with British tableware tastes.

Blue and white china had already been familiar here for generations, from Willow patterns and transferware to countless later floral services.

Blue Hill was not trying to imitate those older designs, but the colour combination was instantly comfortable.

Then there was the platinum trim.

That gave the range just enough formality to make it suitable as a wedding service or the household's better china without pushing it into the territory of something that could only be used for Christmas dinner.

Plenty of Blue Hill appears to have been bought as a proper working service.

Judging by the plates, bowls, cups and saucers that still pass through our hands, plenty of it still is.

A Properly Extensive Dinner Service

Blue Hill was not produced as a handful of basic pieces.

It was a substantial coordinated service.

There were dinner plates, breakfast or salad plates, tea plates and several bowl sizes, together with tea cups, coffee cups and their respective saucers.

The serving range included platters, vegetable dishes, covered serving dishes, gravy boats, cream jugs, sugar bowls, teapots and coffee pots.

There were also smaller accessories such as salt and pepper pots, napkin rings and butter dishes.

That breadth matters today because Blue Hill can still be treated as a complete service rather than simply as a decorative vintage pattern.

Even the Bowls Need a Little Attention

One of the recurring complications with Blue Hill is that there is more than one bowl.

That sounds obvious until somebody simply asks us for a “Blue Hill cereal bowl”.

The range included several rimless bowl sizes, including fruit and cereal forms, as well as a larger soup or salad bowl and an eared or handled bowl.

They can look deceptively similar in photographs.

As with so much replacement china, measuring the piece you already have is far safer than relying entirely on the name somebody has given it online.

Tea and Coffee Were Both Catered For

Blue Hill also followed the traditional distinction between tea and coffee services.

The tea cup and coffee cup are different shapes and use different saucers.

This is another feature increasingly absent from modern starter dinner sets, where the mug has largely marched in and taken control of the entire hot drink department.

Blue Hill belongs to an era when a comprehensive dinner service was expected to offer considerably more choice.

A household could have matching tableware for dinner, tea and coffee without ever leaving the same pattern.

Platinum Trim Needs a Little Common Sense

The metallic edging is an important part of Blue Hill's appearance, but it also affects how the china should be used.

Platinum trimmed tableware should not be put in a microwave.

Microwaves and metallic decoration are not good companions.

The trim can also show wear over time, particularly on heavily used plates or pieces that have been subjected to harsh dishwasher cycles.

That does not necessarily stop an older piece being perfectly usable, but it is something worth considering when adding replacements to an existing service.

Not Every Blue Hill Piece Will Necessarily Look Identical

A pattern produced for more than twenty years can acquire variations.

Backstamps changed, manufacturing locations could differ and examples are found from different periods of Noritake production.

Later Blue Hill pieces marked Sri Lanka are encountered alongside examples associated with Japanese production.

Small differences in colour, body, weight or finish can therefore occur.

They still belong to Blue Hill, but anyone trying to match a particularly consistent existing service may wish to compare the backstamp as well as the decoration.

Why Is There Still So Much Blue Hill Around?

Partly because so much appears to have been sold.

Partly because Noritake made good tableware.

And partly because the pattern stayed in production long enough for households to build substantial services.

That creates an interesting situation for the replacement market.

Blue Hill is by no means impossible to find, but demand remains strong because there are so many existing services still in use.

Every broken dinner plate creates another customer looking for a dinner plate.

And because people often inherited sizeable sets, replacing one missing piece can keep forty or fifty others useful.

Blue Hill Is Still Excellent Everyday China

There is sometimes a temptation to treat discontinued china as though it has automatically become decorative or collectible simply because it is old.

Blue Hill rather resists that idea.

Yes, it is discontinued.

Yes, early examples are now more than fifty years old.

But it is still fundamentally a dinner service.

The plates work. The bowls work. The cups work.

And with plenty of core pieces still circulating on the pre-loved market, it remains one of the more practical discontinued services to continue using.

Replacing Noritake Blue Hill

At MrPottery we currently hold a particularly useful selection of Blue Hill, including dinner plates, breakfast or salad plates, tea plates, bowls, tea and coffee ware and serving pieces.

Core pieces tend to appear reasonably regularly, although particular serving items, lids and less common accessories can take considerably longer to find.

You can browse our current selection of Noritake Blue Hill 2482 replacement china on the MrPottery website.

A Pattern That Earned Its Familiarity

Blue Hill did not become recognisable because it was spectacularly fashionable for one brief moment.

It became familiar because people bought it, used it and kept using it for more than twenty years.

Then many of them carried on using it after Noritake stopped making it.

That may be the best measure of a successful dinner service.

More than fifty years after its introduction, Blue Hill is still turning up on dining tables, still being inherited, and still sending people looking for the plate that completes the set.