BY RANDIMA ATTYGALLE
In early 2023 when Noritake Lanka Porcelain Pvt Ltd (NLPL) invited me to be the Media Consultant for their 50th anniversary celebrations, I was delighted. Not because it was yet another consultancy, but because the brand is close to my heart, having grown up with it.
Spurred by a passion to manufacture exquisite, finely detailed porcelain in Japan, Baron Ichizaemon Morimura set up a factory in Nippon Toki, Nagoya, Japan in 1904. The trade business Morimura set up with the idea of generating wealth for his country and people is today known as Noritake– a connoisseur in the global ceramic industry.
As a joint venture with the Noritake Co. Limited in Japan and Ceylon Ceramics Corporation, Lanka Porcelain (Pvt) Limited commenced their operations in Sri Lanka in 1973. The state-of-the-art factory located in Warakamura, Matale was inaugurated on 5 October, 1973 by the then Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike. In 1993 representing the Noritake global family in Sri Lanka, Lanka Porcelain (Pvt) Limited was renamed as Noritake Lanka Porcelain (Pvt) Limited. Today it has earned a reputation in the international market as a ‘standard of perfection’.
Pride of the table
Ceylon Ceramics’ beauties
Athamma’s famous batik delights
Tea services have always fascinated me since my childhood. The brand Noritake and before that, Ceylon Ceramics and Lanka Porcelain which were household names of my childhood, fired my imagination. I would savour the intricate designs of athamma’s Ceylon Ceramics’ which were popularly known in the family as ‘batik sets’ because the design was inspired by Sri Lankan batik. Athamma picked a tall mug from the set for her everyday tea-drinking, a ritual which took hours, ultimately driving her to sip ‘iced tea’! Her exquisite copper-coloured ‘batik’ set is among my treasured heirlooms today, taken out only on avurudu day as the pride of the table. Her delicate blue Ceylon Ceramics coffee set is tucked away carefully among my other ancestral crockery, their utility value replaced with sentimentality.
Cookies and play tea sets
My porcelain play tea set
Athamma’s and amma’s refined tea services offered me constant amusement. With an assortment of miscellaneous cups and saucers which they could afford to part with, I would throw tea parties, playing hostess to a visiting relative or a cousin. Owning my very own set of porcelain was the ultimate dream of the then 8-year-old me! When my mother’s ‘American mummy,’ Helen Brown (mother of the foster family with whom she stayed in the U.S during her AFS study program) visited us in 1987 when I was the third-grader, I only wanted a ‘real tea set’ from her. She made me gasp and my entire family as she opened the gift, for it was a 16-piece, miniature tea set- a stunning beauty. One of my most treasured childhood mementos, I would make many envious with it. The culmination of my cousin sister Uthpala’s school vacations with us when she came from Kandy was the tea party we would have in our open verandah in my ancestral home in Madapatha. Amma would bake cookies for us which the two of us would carefully arrange on the tiny plates. The most dreaded visitor at the tea party was my little brother with his reputation for mischief. Each time he lifted a delicate cup, our hearts would race. One day the worst nightmare became true when he dropped the sugar bowl. I would wallow in misery for days, loathing his sight as amma could painstakingly piece it up together with Multibond. Thanks to amma’s ‘resurrection’ of the sugar bowl, it still remains intact sans one handle!
Years later, my husband would build a permanent home for my beloved tea set in which my memories continue to brew… He would entrust the set with Plâte, the owner Shamalika Fonseka who did justice to the set by coming up with a wonderful design of a home to display the set. A few years ago, my cousin Uthpala added another pastel coloured play tea set which she stumbled upon in Ottawa. Yet, as we both acknowledge, it’s no match for the one and only childhood porcelain tea set of ours…
Porcelain romance
Lakshman Attygalle
Daya (L) and Lakshman (R) inseparable until the end
Lanka Porcelain and later Noritake became extra special to us for another reason; my father’s most loved cousin, Lakshman Attygalle, cut his teeth in the ceramic industry at Lanka Porcelain. Years later, as a senior professional, Lakshman mahappa took pride in the fact that he climbed up in ranks from humble beginnings at Lanka Porcelain. He and ceramics became synonymous to us. While his ‘Daya malli’ (my father) would call it a day after a brief stint there, with only a plate and his sweetheart Lakshmi’s name engraved on it, his ‘Lakshman aiya’ would bat on. Matale not only became the foundation of his eventful professional journey but it stole his heart forever. He fell in love with gracious Amitha in whose house he was a boarder, commuting to Lanka Porcelain in Warakamura. Later with son Tharindu, the three of them would make Matale their permanent home.
For us, Matale, Lanka Porcelain, (later Noritake) and our beloved Lakshman mahappa who left us forever far too early, became one piece of romance. He would gift the most beautiful and elegant tableware. Each time those adorn our tables today, I feel a lump in my throat, thinking of the man extraordinaire we lost. His infectious laugh, his melodies on the organ, his heart of gold- we are made poor without all of it. From wherever you are, Lakshman mahappa, I know you are beaming with pride as I recap all of this.
Blue Hill and calendar sugar bowls
Lanka Porcelain souvenirs
My grandfather, my atha, Dharmasena Attygalle was a man of merriment. He would entertain often and entertain in style. Noritake’s iconic Blue Hill dinner set would reign supreme. I would watch in wonderment at the gigantic set replete with soup tureens retrieved and carefully laid out by a house retainer. Amma’s partiality to the brand was my good fortune as she has passed down not just her Blue Hill but many of her other Noritake delights.
The numerous gifts of porcelain atha received as the MP for Kesbewa and the Minister of Indigenous Medicine during President J.R.Jayewardene’s regime were among the ‘porcelain memories’ of my childhood. The plates with his name engraved gifted by his political supporters, sugar bowls and milk jars with calendar dates imprinted on them and felicitation souvenirs which were often taken for granted and carelessly lying around in my ancestral home, are today of a different vintage and elevated to antiques. The sugar bowl with the 1979 calendar, my birth year, stands proudly in my kitchen today as a display item.
Many happy moments have been sealed and cemented over Noritake’s elegant, flawless and sophisticated porcelain and Bone China. Behind the secret of Noritake’s perfection is its colourful history. The brand name continues to be sought-after even by the royalty and other celebrities all over the world.
Engaging with Noritake Lankan Porcelain at a professional level was meeting of the minds. I truly indulged myself documenting its history and reliving the brand’s art from my childhood. True to Noritake’s tagline ‘Standard of Perfection’, I will forever be inspired by my family legacy of benchmarking myself only with the best and making a statement of class and taste…
Iconic Blue Hill- Pride of the table