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Five Of My Favourite Dinner Sets

Now I don’t know about you but I find tableware – as it seems to be called these days – tricky. On the one hand I don’t want to spend a fortune because we are a house of clumsy oafs and we break stuff. Also I have a dishwasher. Which means I’m not going to volunteer to wash up by hand.

 open shelves by madaboutthehouse.com
open shelves in the kitchen

I have a particular aversion to this as I went to boarding school and at weekends we ate in our own houses rather than the the communal dining hall. This meant we had take it in turns to wash up for the whole house – about 30 girls. Even now washing and drying up cutlery takes me straight back to those days and I hate it, as the 17 yo would say, with a fiery passion.

Last year we bought some gorgeous vintage glasses which remain hardly used – and that’s also against my principles since I don’t believe in saving things for best but in using them every day (another childhood hang-up) because I don’t like washing up by hand (did I mention that?) and and I’m also afraid of breaking them.

pink amelie side plate by lene bjerre available from rose and grey
pink amelie side plate by lene bjerre available from rose and grey

So what with the issues spilling over from childhood (the things we unwittingly instill in our children eh?) and the inherent clumsiness with a dash of laziness – or should that be the other way round –  we have spent the last 23 years of our shared life together eating off cheap plates.

The last set were seconds from the Port Meirion factory in Stoke on Trent that we rejected before the patterns were painted on.  I hated them. Really disliked the shape. We had them for about eight years. Of course those buggers didn’t chip at all did they. Set of 12 bought for a ridiculously cheap price which remained in perfect condition the entire time we had them – about six years.

And about once a month one of us would say to the other – we must get new plates. And then we would look at the price. And our budget. And our dwindling collection of wine glasses. And we would sigh. And park it for another month.

mr and mrs dinner plate by Sue Pryke
mr and mrs dinner plate by Sue Pryke

Until finally last year we splashed out. And now we have a pretty collection of mismatched plates in varying shades of pink, white, grey and, well yes it probably is a sort of taupe. And yes, that’s because the bowls came from Kelly Hoppen so what else would they be called.

But we have redecorated the kitchen (coming soon –  there’s a glimpse at the top) and so I was forced to look again at our plates. And you know what – I still like them all. Although some are chipped really badly. So this post is a mix of what I have, what I love and what I wish I had.

porcelain by 1st London for Heals
porcelain by 1st London for Heals

So we have the Lene Bjerre glazed pink side plates from Rose & Grey with a couple of the oval bowls to go with. They are lovely to use as serving dishes for tomato salads or a handful of dark green rocket. Slightly bought them as props but use them all the time.

We have the dark grey and pale grey Noah dinner set from made.com. It is quite chipped but I know it’s all made in Portugal and is good quality. I think it’s possibly our fault. Or perhaps it isn’t. I still love it but it’s not looking fabulous at the moment.

zen tableware by kelly hoppen
zen tableware by kelly hoppen

Now you can only buy that in sets with the bowls included. And those bowls were yellow. And I wasn’t eating no food out of yellow bowls not no-how. Which ultimately made it all more expensive as it’s £69 for a set of four and we ditched a third of it. And we still had to find pasta bowls. We bought the Zen bowls from Kelly Hoppen which go perfectly with the plates and are a similar shape.

But if I was less clumsy and more rich I would buy these from Sue Pryke which are so pretty and dishwasher safe. Although it’s not so much with the dishwasher as the unloader that the problems start I suspect.

noah grey and yellow dinner set from made.com
noah grey and yellow dinner set from made.com

Or the gorgeous porcelain plates by 1st London which are exclusive to Heals and which I have picked up many times on my way past and which are so light and so pretty but I’m afraid. Afraid of the chips and how light they are and how fragile they feel. Although I’m assured they are tougher than they look.

So these are my plates. What do you have? Expensive and rarely used? Cheap and cheerful? Or somewhere in the middle?

open shelf detail by madabouthehouse.com
open shelf detail by madabouthehouse.com

Let us know in the comments below and share any other good designers that we need to know about.

Kate Watson-Smyth

The author Kate Watson-Smyth

I’m a journalist who writes about interiors mainly for The Financial Times but I have also written regularly for The Independent and The Daily Mail. My house has been in Living Etc, HeartHome and featured in The Wall Street Journal & Corriere della Sera. I also run an interior styling consultancy Mad About Your House. Welcome to my Mad House.

32 Comments

  1. I am late to this post…. but we queued outside Heals in 1967 and bought Thomas brand plain white dinner service, 8 of everything which were “best” until 2013! Now we have downsized we use them everyday mixed with plain and thin, white porcelain plates from Wilko’s, cheap as ……. err chips!!!

  2. Ha! I remember that cutlery-washing! Pour it into the sink and stir with the brush….

    We have a huge set of Denby, a mixture of blue and white, which was on our wedding list 16 years ago. I’m utterly, utterly bored with it, but it has proved to be bomb-proof, and we have only lost one plate in all that time.

  3. We use our Thomas porcelain plates and bowls bought as part of a full set of tableware by our friends 26 years ago as a wedding gift. We still have 8 dinner plates and the very narrow platinum rim is still intact despite being used daily for the last 10 years. When we moved to our terrace cottage we needed to make decisions about what could fit into our tiny space and basically what had been our ‘best’ became our ‘everyday’. Only purchase in recent years has been a set of Rorstrand bowls and small plates which I fell in love with in Sweden but they fit in well with the plates.
    I do buy the odd beautiful serving platter or bowl, often when abroad but have never regretted choosing the Thomas set all those years ago. And it is still made and available in plain white porcelain.

  4. I’ve given up matching china. If I see something I like I’ll buy one, maybe two, pieces. Result, I can match the plate or cup or whatever to the person who will be using it. Eating alone, I have a choice of what plate to use for a particular recipe. Eating, and even washing up, is much more fun!

  5. I couldn’t put my finger on the change in your kitchen, I got the colour change, couldn’t figure if you’d changed the worktops from the photo, but what the other change was was so… subtle, but i’ve Got it now, you’ve gone naked , replacement doors only perhaps. Do I win the prize,!

  6. Experience has taught me to avoid plates with an up turned rim – it’s this that gets chipped quickly. And having got completely fed up with chipped cereal bowls I now have a set of chip proof speckled enamel bowls from Labour and Wait which are a delight !

  7. We bought two sets of very reasonably priced dinner sets from Next about 20 years ago when we had small children. Everything about them was perfect – white with a ribbed design on edge of small and large plates, same rib on beautifully shaped bowls (chinese noodle bowl shape), and ribbed pattern mugs (much better than tea cups). We still have some pieces left and despite replacing them (twice) continue to use them daily. We just have to use another set when we have more family or friends around. Have not yet found anything to replace them fully.
    Thank you for the excellent article.

  8. Contrary to what you might think, porcelain and bone China are sturdier and less prone to chips than ceramic. Also, chipped ceramic usually looks worse than chopped porcelain or china for several reasons, including the fact that the clay is more porous and soaks up things such as tea.

  9. Many years ago I bought a Dorothy Haffner Flash dinner plate from Liberty as something for a wall. Twenty years or so later I have a large unused collection which has nothing to do with fear of breakage and replacement cost; too late I realised that its design, which I love, rather detracts from the food in many ways. But it looks good on display. Denby’s 70s Bokhara is still going strong as are several Hornsea pieces. More recently I have embraced a black and white mix of anything that appeals including some Amara and Missoni bits, the latter being seen only on high days and holidays then carefully washed by hand. Sadly I do find it hard to part with pots and crocks of any kind but have promised my daughters first pick for eBay before I depart this life.

  10. I have a collection of 50’s Swedish dinner sets (I live in Sweden). I wash everything I have – crystal glasses and the lot – in the dishwasher. If I don’t then I won’t use them. I have quite a few Royal Danish plates that my mother in law has purchased for me – they are ridiculously expensive and hand painted and I wash them in the dishwasher as well. There is a great dinner service called Swedish Grace by Rorstrand. It was designed in 1930 but only available in white back then. These days it is available in some lovely colours. (you need to look closely at the pics to see the pattern) It might cost a lot in England. I wouldn’t know. I have this in pink and a grey/blue – all the colours match really well together. If you are coming to Sweden on holiday you can buy this at the Rorstand outlet. Thanks again for an inspiring post!

  11. About 7654365438 decades ago I bought a blue & white patterned plate to hang on the wall. Somehow, that morphed into a dinnerware collection of blue & white settings for 6, plus some serving pieces. More serving pieces added in simple white. There’s only rule: no more than 2 pieces in the same pattern. Pretty much all the pieces have been picked up separately at end of lines sales, so not too pricey. Every once in a while I feel bored & think about starting over, maybe in mismatched florals, but then I find another blue & white plate/bowl/platter in a new to me pattern & I’m back in my happy place.

  12. Sophie Conran for Portmeirion does for me, especially the seconds so I don’t feel bad if there’s a clumsy disaster!

  13. I have Denby cups and saucers and plates for 26 years now.I dont know how they have survived but they have.I am getting a whole new kitchen this year so intend to buy some new stuff but still dont know if I can part with my Denby

  14. Last year I bought some stunning black, white and gold plates from Black Cat that I am still convinced will be used for amusing little dinners a deux, but for everyday use I have a nice stack of a gold-rimmed design – I think quite good quality, it’s a Portuguese brand, that I got at a charity event. People are always wanting to get rid of old sets – or part sets – of china and you can pick up fabulous, quality designs that you feel totally happy to use everyday because they were a bargain buy. They are not cool modernist, of course, but I think they follow the trend for putting a rich Indian carpet in the kitchen as a balance to all the sleekness.

  15. When I moved to Scotland 25 years ago, all we had were baskets. I needed to set up a home and tried to find the equivalent of a Crate and Barrel. There was nothing for hours. So I went to a stop called Boots in the local town where they had a 12 piece dinner set of white plates rimmed in cobalt blue. Three children later, we have suffered not a single chip or broken plate, and I’ve never been able to justify replacing them. But with everyone now grown up, I’m up for change and am going to take the bold step of taking them all to Oxfam and restocking the cupboard with a new set. If I can ever decide on what I want to live with forever again.

  16. I love yellow bowls !
    My grandmother had Midwinter crockery – when it was new, before it was a collector’s thing ! – and we had our cereal in the sunny dining room in sunny yellow bowls with a beautiful shape to them. There were only 3 left by the time I inherited them and I so rarely use them as one is badly cracked …

  17. Oh, by the way, Made.com do a lovely set in tonal grey and blue, or is it tonal blue and grey? Anyway that gets over the problem of the yellow bowls. Going to order them now!

  18. Hi Kate,

    I purchased the Made.com set following your recommendation on an earlier post but although beautiful I was very disappointed with the quality. They are all now badly chipped, the plates are too big for a standard size dishwasher and they are not microwave proof so really impractical.
    A shame as the colours are fab!

    1. Mine do fit in the dishwasher and I don’t have a microwave but yes the chips…. I was speaking to made about something else the other day and mentioned this and they said they would speak to the buying team so I’ll let you know if I hear anything back.

  19. Oh Kate, you’ve hit a nerve this morning. I loved the post and started thinking … hmm … can a girl have too many plates? No such thing. I completely agree re keeping for best (I’ve got a set I bought at Liberty and the very end of the sale years ago – exquisite porcelain but not dishwasher friendly so guess what – I never use it). My latest obsession was an ebay find of Arabia’s Paradise plates, a pattern designed by Birger Kaipiainen in, I think, about 1970 and reproduced in green and purple (I know, sounds yuck – this is a marmite pattern) some years later. It started off life as something decorative but of course I use it. It has held up well and every supper time becomes more of a thrill from eating off these plates. But I suspect you’d hate them as they’re so highly patterned. I love the Sue Pryke ones, incidentally – her colour palette is so seductive, but then there are those Heals bowls … I’m working on the basis that, like clothes and bags, a plate becomes cheaper with every use. Delicious post – thanks for brightening up a damp Tuesday.

  20. I love the pink plates but have the same problem with clutziness in our house. The only thing that have managed to stay unchipped are the denby pasta bowls – although dropping one onto granite from where it then bounced into the fully loaded dishwasher has caused minor damage to one! I too am loathe to buy expensive new stuff cos I know it won’t stay that way for long….luckily I do quite like the denby

  21. Lars Soendergaard! I discovered him in a little village in Suffolk about 7 years ago and never looked back!
    http://www.soendergaarddesign.co.uk. Over a period of a couple of years he made a variation on his inge design in shades of grey for me (and some gorgeous bowls in vivid blue and deep mauve) lots of pieces of each for lots of entertaining and dishwasher use!!!!he is so easy to work with and so far no chips! Amazing value and I’m still in love with them.

  22. Love the open shelving in the kitchen. How do you find it? Easy to keep clean?

    1. All the things on the lower three shelves are used a lot so they don’t tend to collect dust. The top shelves do as I don’t use the things on there as much. I have a feather duster than I poke in and out and round about once a month and then every now and then – probably not as often as I should – I take things off and re-arrange and clean but as it’s a long way from the hob there is no issue with grease – just a bit of dust.

  23. We have White Company plates which I love but they are now chipped (after 13 years so not bad). I bought lovely plates from West Elm when we had the kitchen done as the WC plates were too small for the plate rack I had artfully planned. They are lovely but pretty big and a bit awkward for daily use in the dishwasher so we use them for when people come over (as they are not chipped!) And I like yellow bowls!

  24. We have our old ikea set we bought a million years ago-it seems indestructable and being broke and hating waste we can’t bring ourselves to replace it. In my dreams i own the nkuku karuma set-so simple and beautiful!

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