More than a third of all Americans once had these dishes in their homes – did you?

The “Butterfly Gold” pattern creates instant nostalgia.

Corelle

The name Corelle might not be familiar to everyone – especially people who aren’t particularly interested in dinnerware. But for those of us who grew up in the seventies and eighties, Corelle plates are synonymous with childhood. If you didn’t use the gold, flowery-patterned plates at home then you knew someone who did. They were nice looking, relatively cheap and (almost) indestructible.

Introduced by Corning Glass Works exactly fifty years ago, the plates were an instant hit. The first year they sold 425,000 pieces. A year later that number skyrocketed to over 38 million. Corelle dishware sales continued to climb through the 1980s. At its peak, 35% of American households owned Corelle dishes. That’s about 75 million people all eating off the same plates!

In 1970, Corning took a creative approach to developing their new line of dinnerware. They surveyed 8,000 households to hear what kinds of plates and bowls people actually wanted. After talking with the public, company representatives noticed two main requests: dishes that are durable but aren’t heavy, and dishes that look good but aren’t expensive. Thus, the plates we all know and love were born.

Initially, Corning came out with four different color designs all set against “Winter Frost White.” There were two blue designs, Old Town Blue and Snowflake Blue, along with Spring Blossom Green and, of course, Butterfly Gold. The extremely popular, ornamental gold decoration lasted until the early 1990s.

Do you remember eating family meals off of Corelle plates?

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23 Comments

Wyatt 34 months ago
I had Spring Blossom green & then Woodland brown and for the past 25 years have been using the Old Town Blue we gave my grandmother in 1979
Jewbelyne 38 months ago
Yes everyday. Gold and blue combo trim and another with maroon trim.
Jeanna_MD 38 months ago
I still use these every day!
cudles41 39 months ago
We still have them,the gold and blue!
bettyluvsgators 43 months ago
ate from the green ribbed one millions of times!! brings back memories of some really good country food!
44 months ago
I still have some of the Green Spring Blossom Corelle Ware. Fifty years old! That dinner ware was touted as unbreakable, but when accidentally dropped, it would shatter into a million fragments.
47 months ago
Yes we did, and still have some now.
Brian 48 months ago
Still use mine... great dishes for people with arthritis as they're lightweight & thus easy to hold, and they clean easily. The mugs were not great, and the medium-sized bowls weren't quite big enough, and the next-size-larger bowls were ginormous.
MonaCooper 48 months ago
I still have mine that were wedding gifts 41 years ago and we still use them everyday.
DawnGraham 49 months ago
I still use Corelle dinner wear everyday.
Moody 49 months ago
They still make them today with new colors & patterns.
https://www.corningware.com/products/6311/dinnerware-sets
Lantern 49 months ago
I've got a set of the Callaway design in my pantry right now.
texasluva 49 months ago
A friend of mine has these plates. I think she said they were called starburst.
Rik 49 months ago
My mom still has the set she got in 1974...
ValT 49 months ago
Yep, my mother loved her Butterfly Gold! I have one of the old style cups, but we donated the rest somewhere.
Pacificsun 49 months ago
The article didn't talk about what happens when they do break. Not often. But if they hit a tile floor. They end up shattering in a million pieces. Still, they weren't like regular ceramic plates that chipped and cracked all the time. Those dishes we got as some kind of free give away for shopping at certain stores. They didn't last but a couple of years. I still use the Corelle dishes from the time they were first introduced.
MrsPhilHarris Pacificsun 49 months ago
Mine were white with some blue flowers. Kept a few. Last year one fell on the tile floor. Smashed into a hundred pieces.
Pacificsun MrsPhilHarris 49 months ago
Yeah, the were closer to a glass compound than ceramic (clay).
Wyatt Pacificsun 34 months ago
I've broken more that one and it's always the same explosion and projectiles LOL
Wells 49 months ago
When my wife and I got married in 1971, we received two sets of melmac dinnerware which we used for daily esting. We eventually purchased a set of Correlle Butterfly dinnerware and used it on holidays, etc. We now use it daily and it looks as new as the day we
bought it.
15inchBlackandWhite 49 months ago
We had Butterfly Gold when I was a kid in the 70's. And I have set of white Corelle which are my everyday dishes now. When we got married we didn't realize that registries were a thing and we got 8 sets of Corelle. Our apartment looked like a Corelle factory warehouse!
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