1000 words and the plates that said them

Place setting.

Girl.

Total accuracy.

I was out standing in a field last week (long story, and after all, it's not an uncommon occurrence) when I noted perhaps the most painstakingly accurate match of a fine china plate pattern to the host who possessed it.

At this event, each guest was asked to bring their own dinner plate - it is a tradition of the meal. Of the 140 guests whose places were set at one long table in a field, this plate had an arresting quality when walking along the table and, although Rachel Martin was not immediately around to tell me so, I knew that was her pattern.

Now then, below is mine. Raynaud, Festivite. In the course of my work here, I look at a lot of patterns, both new and historic. I adore this pattern, but as new patterns emerge, I wonder if there is a more accurate reflection of myself not only as a host, but as a complete life.

Noting this made me curious; now that I know Rachel's skill in this area, which she would choose if she were to choose a pattern to tell 1000 words about each of the important people in her world...

Is your place setting an accurate reflection of you?

Photo credits: Boxwood Winery

You wrote to me

Sometime ago when I wrote about remembering local stores giving away china as promotional items in Remains of the Day, a number of you wrote to me with your memories of mothers and grandmothers buying a plate here or there, or saving slips which would eventually add up to complimentary pieces in whichever pattern a local grocery store might be offering.

I remember my own Grandmother explaining this to me at Finest Grocery store in Mount Kisco, New York. I was little and this had to be 1978 or 1979. Powerful memories occur in grocery stores for all of us evidently. Grocery trips and plate patterns marked many of us and I think of this now when I enter a store with my girls so I thank you for calling my attention to how they will look back on a seemingly innocuous task. But, I digress.

Delmarva Media has published a net article, the title of which I take issue with so it will not be published here, but the content, on plates and grocery stores is relevant. Find it here.

I did a little digging regarding the pattern I assume the writer refers to, which is likely Blue Garland by Haviland.

Staggering that at one point, Haviland which bills itself with such refinement now, and has patterns costing into the many thousands for place settings, was once respectably attained at the A&P. I love that once upon a time Haviland patterns were easily available to all through one means or another and wish it were the case today. As I look over the Michael C. Fina website and shake my head with disapproval, it is hard to believe fine china was once so accessible because it is perfectly outrageous for many now.

It is a fine story those of you who wrote in will recognize in parts, although I very much disagree that "Fine china is the mark of a caring hostess."

I prefer something far more sensible and grounded in reality for a sentiment: "Preventing salmonella is the mark of a caring hostess and after that you do what you can." Or something which rolls off the tongue equally as appealingly.

Sometimes obtuseness is overwhelming.

Remains of the day

This morning I was nursing my butter addiction along side my coffee addiction. After Easter, the butter is the battered remains of a molded lamb. Two years ago the little old lady who made these for all of southern Fairfield county broke her leg and up and ended up in a nursing home just in time for Easter.

I cannot tell you the ruckus that ensued over how anyone was going to be getting any lambs. She would not tell anyone else how to make make the clove-eyed wonders nor surrender her molds. She just slammed shut the door of the whole buttery lamb thing and bid us all keep in mind how critical she was to us.

The next year, a local church in an enough-is-enough-with-your-broken-legged self-importance gesture, ordered a whole mess of lamb molds and doled them out liberally. So, everyone was pretty well-lambed last year, though people still called the Ukraine church and asked for the old girl and her lambs. She was home by then but still not willing to allow the lamb-tending into the hot hands of some bush league butter dilettante who maybe had never even laid shifty eyes on a real lamb and certainly would have no clue as to the spiritual meaning of the thing. Just not a thing for butter putters and the like, obviously.

This year, the lamb lady is holed up somewhere and, likely having heard everyone with a birthday was given a lamb mold last year, is hot, if not downright antagonized. I can only hope she has not begun to mold little voodoo figures out of margarine in hopes of evening up the score.

I digress, but I've been sore about this lamb bickering and subsequent fiasco for three years running. I have to tell you, I just do not want to hear about anymore. I mean, really. Is cloistering yourself with a hundred lamb molds the Christian thing to do? I'm talking my sacred lamb plastic and I'm going home. You are not going to have the old lamb bag to kick around anymore!

I know, I know, let it go. But look, it's a little crazy (hang on while I clean the windows in my glass house, will you?).

Alright. In any event, there I was, half a slaughtered butter lamb (made by my Mama, touche!) and some nut bread and I got to thinking about this pretty set of dishes my Mom used on Easter. I remember them fondly. My Grandparents saved grocery store tickets to get the full set when we were very tiny. This is the blue set, there was also a green. I will say this was about 1978 or so, it is one of my earliest memories.

Can you honestly believe a grocery store gave away something this pretty and delicate? It is, I promise you, beautiful. I understand their diligence in saving those Finest receipts now.

The mark is Myott, England, Forget Me Not, Fine Staffordshire Ware. While it may not have been all that "fine" in quality, it is very fine to the eye. The lambs looked heavenly on them.

Enchanted, I'm sure

The very sophisticated magic of childhood, immortalized.



Tree houses. Secret gardens. Indian realms. Deep forests full of mysterious startlers.



A dream world, as great as any tea party Alice might have imagined.



On cream porcelain with inspirations culled from the sepia engravings of François Houtin.

The twenty-one piece service set, by La Table D’Hermès will be available to your inner child this spring.

Of floors and weeping on them

A New York Times piece stopped me cold recently. Specifically, the author's reaction to one of her Grandmother's plates having shattered after New Year's dinner.

"The night before New Year’s Eve, I drove to my parents’ house, packed up the dishes and brought them home. I washed them carefully the next day, discovering a perfect sugar bowl I’d never noticed, admiring the shine on the gilt handle of a sculptural serving piece. After the children had gone to bed, and we and our friends sat down to a shimmering table, I felt as if I was liberating a set of dishes from decades of oppression. Why not use them every night? And if one or two broke over the years, so what? At least the dishes would have lived, insomuch as dishes can.

That's how I felt, at least, until the startlingly loud sound of that dish, a saucer, falling to the floor almost two hours after midnight. Glittering shards scattered across the kitchen floor, each one so delicately beautiful I had to leave the room.

It was surprisingly consoling when I discovered a few minutes later that even after that mishap, we still had more saucers than we had teacups: three had apparently already been broken. I was glad we hadn’t lost a set, but it also made me wonder. Maybe my mother had remembered wrong; maybe there had been some happy late-night parties at my grandmother’s home. Wine had been drunk. A dish or two had broken, as dishes do — as anything does, eventually.

We won’t be using those dishes every night, after all. I hope to use them before next New Year’s Eve, but I can see how it takes some will to risk a little loss in the name of celebrating what’s dear."

- The Courage to Use the China, Susan Dominus for The New York Times

My Mother can remember my Grandmother picking up shards of her broken china and crying, sincerely, over the broken plates and cups as she disposed of their remains. They were not heirloom pieces. Wedding gifts, surely not inexpensive but largely replaceable at the time, I imagine.

At first, it seemed frivolous emotionally and selfishly dramatic and frankly, a touch dangerous, to fall to one's knees weeping in a pile of broken glass. But as services have come down to me, and survived all we have known as a family, I realize it could happen; Not before guests, not for my girls to witness, and maybe not weeping, because, that is decidedly not my thing.

But still, there is a chance I might have to take a long moment over the irreplaceable pieces my people's hands touched. When you relinquish any survivor, inanimate or otherwise, to its fate, it does carry some ache, does it not?

In learning one or two things since I first heard mention of the weeping over plates, it seems a good deal easier to accept that some may have just such a remarkable response.

If it happens to you, send all accusers to me, I've got your back.

Table style: Rock the Casbah

The alluring table setting of the Emmy's Governor's Ball, September 20, 2009 by Sequoia Productions.

Take me to the Casbah on any scale, is always my policy.

Dress it up.

Jean Louis Coquet Hemisphere Matte Gold, Gumps

Moroccan tea glasses

Horchow

Even the buffet.


Horchow

Pare it down, maybe.

Tangiers, attractive on a bare tabletop

But always serve Blushing's Moroccan Chicken.

Pattern spotlight: Lexington

Perfect for celebrating the opening of the new World Equestrian Center in Lexington, Kentucky this year and the FEI World Cup Grand Prix in 2010 which is making a long-awaited return to the states: Lexington, exclusively for L.V. Harkness. Available as this standard bay hand-painted horse or as a recreation of your own horse, or mine. Jasper, on my dinner service. I think I love it.

Pattern Spotlight: Blue Onion, Meissen

The Blue Onion pattern by Meissen (Dresden) turned 270 years old this year. Now, that is what it means to hand down a porcelain pattern.

Meissen is a curiosity: Beginning with the journey of the troubled first employee of Meissen, Johann Friedrich Böttger, who was jailed by Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland in current eastern Germany when his persistent attempts to turn lead into gold for the King failed repeatedly. His only remaining option was to find an alternate use for himself as a scientist in Augustus' court and finally he found success in making porcelain to rival the then prized Chinese porcelain. On his back the Royal Saxon Porcelain Manufactory in Meissen, Germany was founded. While he managed to perfect the hard clay kiln-fired process in 1708 (the first on the continent), Meissen was still years away from developing the hand painted patterns for which their tableware is known. Though, they were centuries ahead of their peers in other respects: Meissen dinnerware is, and by virtue of its 1450 degree firing, always has been, dishwasher safe.

Now to the historical pattern notes: You may be interested to know there is not one onion in the pattern, rather pomegranates and peaches modelled on an ancient Chinese pattern called "Three Blessed Fruits" which are pomegranate, peach, and lemon. In the Meissen pattern revision. the lemon and pomegranate were merged and were so often mistaken for onions, the name eventually stuck. Have a closer look.



Meissen now makes more than 750 different items in this pattern now nearly three centuries old. This will assure those buying or registering for the pattern now that there will be no shortage of replacements if a dinner plate breaks, and no shortage of gifts for those buying you pieces as gifts in future years.

Pattern Spotlight: Puebla

The Hostess is a shameless lover of Spanish and Mexican pottery when it comes to collecting. Not so much when it comes to displaying it. Tell you the truth: Pottery was a four letter word in our home growing up and I have not overcome. I bring the pieces out for outdoor dinners and parties but otherwise I still feel some trepidation: An Aesthete's Lament has only recently convinced me not to be self-conscious about slip covers, we are a long way from pottery on the mantle! Nonetheless, this pattern, Puebla by Pottery Barn, is pretty for summer and I love it against that bowl of purples and fuchsias behind.

Pattern Spotlight: Charms by Monique Lhuillier

I want to revisit this post on Monique Lhuillier tabletop because this pattern, Charms, is sweet and original: The charm bracelet graces porcelain. For a light hearted table-setter, no doubt.

Pattern Spotlight: Jardins de Florence, Philippe Deshoulieres

Garden inspired and modern without edginess. Jardins de Florence, Philippe Deshoulieres. Here.

Pattern Spotlight: Giraffe by Laurie Gates

More like a dessert set than place settings, this pattern is modern but whimsical for accent pieces on a neutral table. Giraffe, by Laurie Gates. Here.

Pattern Spotlight: Amaryllis by Haviland

Someone expects you'll put food on top of these plates. What a nut. As if I could stop looking at these long enough to cook something and then somehow be willing to put food on top of it. Never. Amaryllis by Haviland Limoges, here.

Pattern Spotlight: Southampton by Charlotte Moss

An engaging charmer for summer: Southampton by Charlotte Moss, here.

Pattern Spotlight: Alain Thomas Collection for Haviland

Love the tropical intensity here but momentarily confused by the choice to place this sophisticated bird on a rustic bench in a fall-leaf scene... anyway, Alain Thomas for Haviland Limoges. Here.

Pattern Spotlight: Jute, Vietri

Somehow luxe and rough hewn all at once. Texture in placesettings instead of chargers and placemats. I love it. Jute, by Vietri, here.

Pattern spotlight: Ch'ing Garden

Seriously. How many beautiful things can you get on one dinner plate? Ch'ing Garden, Mottahedeh, via Mayfair House.

Gold Standard: Royal Limoges

Oasis, Royal Limoges
All place settings are not created equal. And it matters that you have something glorious on the table, not only for your guests, but for your senses to be thrilled at the table, for your family to enjoy even if it is limited to Sundays and holidays. Many of the greats began millions of years ago only they looked more like this...



than this.

Beleme, Royal Limoges

This is kaolinite or kaolin, a mineral clay substance found on several continents but where porcelain is concerned, notably in China originally and later discovered in France, right there outside Limoges.

It is unfortunate so many bridal registries avoid porcelain because it is not dishwasher safe and perceived as too high-maintenance, too formal, or too pretentious. My kitchen dishes are from Williams-Sonoma and are very easy to manage but in the dining room, I use porcelain or bone: I am willing to do a little extra work to eat from a work of art.

If one considers a porcelain such as Limoges (which denotes the city of orgin, and not a process, quality, or artistry specific to the porcelain), a host or hostess might be more appreciative of the articles and willing to care gently for them.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries porcelains from China enjoyed tremendous popularity in Europe. An enterprising French business manager for the Crown was charged with finding a new industry for the area around Limoges and discovered the earth there held huge deposits of kaolinite which was the chief ingredient in the porcelain Europe was readily consuming from China at the time. The first mines, factories, and patterns belonged strictly to the Crown and were employed only to create porcelain for French royalty. Kaolin yields a white product and another cottage industry was born to hand paint the porcelain products of Limoges. This arrangement thrived for Limoges until the excesses of royalty were ended by revolution.


Paradis Vegetal, Royal Limoges

Ever the pragmatists however, the porcelain industry of Limoges reached out to recreate itself with David Haviland (of Haviland Limoges) as the foremost salesman of the reinvention of Limoges as the place settings of cultured Americans. Limoges rode this new train until approximately 1930 when the Great Depression caused another difficult period in Limoges manufacturing history.


Gold Lion, Royal Limoges

Though the Depression and the advent of very casual dining has created an upscale, artistic niche for Limoges porcelin in the eighty years since, many tasteful hosts continue to demand French porcelain for their tables. The Hostess is counted among these table-setters.


Boudior, Royal Limoges

You have been viewing the ever-exquisite patterns of Royal Limoges, SA., Limoges, France, the oldest French porcelain manufacturer and in the Hostess' humble estimation, a company whose patterns are still very much fit for kings.

Available here.