Regarding the family plates. In the 1940s there were a couple of companies who toured the midwest teaching and providing supplies for china painting, cloth stenciling, gadgets for "quick knitting" and knot and braid gadgets - a generation later would morph into "macrame" ...
They would be in small towns for a week or so, long enough to give basic classes. Rural people on farms would participate a lot because in many places, similar to where I was born and raised, there was no TV and visual hobbies could be done while listening to the radio. I recall that it began soon after the war ended because my uncle Willard had just come home from the VA hospital with his new arm prosthesis and he accompanied my aunt to the first few classes and then joined himself because they also sold model-building supplies and he wanted to build model planes.
After the customers painted the china, the company would box them up and send them to the factory to be glazed and fired and then shipped back. There were also little figurines - mostly elves - angels, butterflies and other creatures - one of my aunts painted an elephant sitting on a ball, remarkable only because the larger than normal eyes were crossed - which she did on purpose.
My aunts were avid hobbyists and they went in for the more elaborate flower painting on china rather than the "family" portraits, mainly because there were way too many in my family. They would have covered an entire wall.
I never was allowed near the china painting but I was allowed to do some stenciling on table linens, pillowcases, and even was allowed to use my own artwork on my pillowcase, (a portrait of my horse).
