China Galore!
Suzanne Pollak
You might wonder what difference can a plate make? Excellent question! Setting a table with imagination — think art installation, think many patterns of plates — may cause all manner of things to happen. Empires have risen and fallen around the dinner table. We ourselves might not be able to mend the world but we can tidy up our corner of it. Dinner by dinner we make life worth living for ourselves and others. One way is by having fun setting the table.
An opportunity has arisen to collect bits and pieces, stacks and sets, china considered best in the world; Richard Ginoi, Haviland, Royal Crown Derby, Mottehedah, Herend, Gien. Charleston’s finest wedding and gift store shut down resulting in a porcelain treasure trove. The owner of Vieuxtemps is selling off a myriad of marvels at a discount. If you relish adding zing to your dinners do something lickety-split. (This post is not sponsored!)
A single dinner plate or a set of twelve is not a big investment but an unremitting delight. Collecting these things pays dividends over and over and over, not in interest payments but in creating settings that facilitate interesting conversations and connections.
Owning multiple sets gives you tools and options to continually create unique settings. Unify the table according to your own rules. Choose plates with a similar feature from different sets, such as all rims, or medallions, or in the same color way. Have fun finding out who notices your roast chicken served on different color bird plates. Design useful centerpieces, lining chargers down the center of the table and topped with food, like serving platters. Fill wide rimmed tea cups with soup, for a first course. Collect dozens of different tea cups to host an annual mother daughter holiday tea party.
Now don’t get me wrong. There is a certain charm to our grandmother’s and great grandmother’s match-y match-y dining tables — do remember that their handbags and shoes, coats and hats, nail and lipstick matched too. That was the way it was. Now we live in a diverse society free to express many moods, create endless experiences and introduce all kinds of people to each other, right from our dining tables. Why not do it in the most imaginative way possible to create a scene and make things of consequence occur at and from your table?
Consider:
- A set of six different color bird plates from ultra-luxury Royal Crown Derby.
- Sets of Herend tea cups and saucers to mix and match for hosting mother daughter holiday tea parties on an afternoon between Christmas and the New Year.
- Six or twelve plain and patterned chargers to mix plus use as serving platters.
- Sets of plates of one make but with different patterns and color ways that work together.
- Sets with central medallions.
