Got Gravy?

Today I got one step closer to completing my Ben Seibel Sleepy Hollow dinnerware collection with the addition of a new gravy boat! That makes two gravy boats I now have for the Sleepy Hollow pattern. It seems that the Iroquois Informal patterns have both the plain white accent color boat with its attached underbase (below) and a stand alone boat with the pattern on the inside, which is the piece I obtained today. I only knew of one (the plain attached underplate version), so I was surprised to find this one. It was an ebay find that I couldn't pass up. It's not listed on my pattern brochure, but maybe it was a piece added later or discontinued previously.

The yellow on the plain yellow and white one is a little lighter than the yellow of most of my other dishes, but it's likely just a variation. As CollectoratorOne and I have since read in Richard Racheter's Tableware Design's of Ben Seibel: 1940's -1980's (a super great book if you collect Seibel) there were four accent colors only so any seeming color variation is likely just from the production differences or use. We didn't find any discussion of two gravy boats in Richard Racheter's book either but maybe it was just common knowledge that there were two variations so no need to discuss it.

Now why would someone NEED two gravy boats. I actually have four at this point so no need to argue why one would need two when you have four! I have two for Sleepy Hollow and two identical ones for my Royal Star Glow pattern. I started with one and realized sometimes you just need more. Obviously, there's a need to house gravy, but imagine the scenario when you serve a vegetable with a mornay sauce in addition to the meat with a gravy, then what? You "could" serve the sauce on the vegetable but not everyone wants an equal amount of sauce so quite the dilemma develops. The Collectorator-girl would say "oh wait! I have two gravy boats! That'll solve the problem!" and everyone eats happily ever after.... As you can see things can get complicated pretty fast in a culinary serving situation without at least two gravy boats! I wonder what Meta Givens would say about all of this...