How mismatched tableware can serve up casual elegance
For a 70s folksy feel, look for natural themed prints. Taika napkins by Iitala, from €4.47 for Klaus Haapaniemi napkins, coffee cups from €16.16, nordicnest.com
DINNER with friends? Combining antique, vintage, and brand-new ware is the ultimate in undone elegance.
Whether you’re planning your Christmas feast or want to set out a gorgeous tea-table for a couple of trusted pals in your "bubble", get the entertaining oldies out and enjoy them.
Many of us are downright terrified of actually using our old glass, silver, and flatware (dishes). Will the tenderly collected Mason Ironstone or collected 1930s Willow pattern be broken, scuffed or, even worse, unappreciated by the gang?
Incredibly busy and decorous period styling is leading the market this winter, with many high-profile fashion houses joining in with antique-inspired dinner services. Dior Maison’s Limoge porcelain by Cordelia de Castellane is inspired by the furniture and surroundings of Christian Dior’s salon at 30 Avenue Montaigne in Paris — which perfectly explains why you’ll be forking out €110 with a Gallic simper for a pretty but unexciting dessert plate with the master’s petite motif of a cloverleaf.
Many designer collections are lifted from old sets, antique fabrics, illustrations, classic art and wall-coverings — look up the screamingly expensive products from Hermes (pass me the smelling salts, would you?).
Well, there’s a lot of old dishes going around — boxes full of part and even full dinner services at any auction, scattered through charity shops and available on eBay and Etsy. Consider looks you like (a mood-board or number of boards on Pinterest is a great start) and start gathering a mismatched set of fascinating used oddities. I’ve given up on buying things designed for regular use that I’m afraid to touch — dust-catchers atrophying on the shelf. Why have a nostalgia (or boast) museum, rather than a friendly household bit of vintage still active in your life?
Pressed coloured glass from the '20s to the '40s is treacle-thick and heavy — really robust for supporting bread rolls, bedding napkins down, and even decanting light foods and drink. Don’t reject cheap, seriously old stoneware meat plates with some rubbing to their transfer decoration, crazing, staining or even a light crack — beautiful on show as a centrepiece and fabulous to use with care.
Vintage Czech glassware takes its colour and beauty from Renaissance Venetian antiques, and popular in the 60s and 70s, there are plenty of Bohemian flutes and cocktail sets online.
There is a cut-off point. Slapping food onto 18th-century Johann Friedrich Eberlein-designed Meissen is daft and reckless. We don’t want anyone to toast roughly with a "ker-clunk" using your 19th-century Waterford stemware, or gouge the surface of an heirloom Clarice Cliff cake plate with their cutlery — not even with a butter knife cleaving bread. Think it through. Hand-painted pieces and gilding is vulnerable. You don’t have to put it through the dishwasher to vandalise it.
Still, if you have one or two lovely orphaned Edwardian (Italian collection blue and white) Copeland Spode or regal Coalport plates — sumptuous in detail? Add a paper doily to shield the surface and they can still carry a few scones without worry. Finger foods and sandwiches? The meal is plucked up safely and gently. If you’re dancing around on edge, hissing “pleeeeease, be careful with that cut-glass Dympna, it’s VINTAGE!” then put it away. Don’t serve anyone with a seriously damaged plate that could cut their fingers — dings look dingy too.
Rising to a lunch or dinner set, there are easy ways to assemble a unique table-scape with exquisite prints and extra detailing such as scalloped edges. Frankly, if it doesn’t look vintage inclined at all, what’s the point? For the 1950s, Ridgway’s Homemakers is the tip-top with its Mad Men furniture sketches on a white ground. Plain, mid-century flatware — looks like harshly-used new ware. Forget it. There are so many flattering imitations to tempt us.
Try layering your ornamental old plates, on simple white or neutral grey dinner-plates. Use them as accents, throwing colour and character. Baroque curves, art deco flash or a relaxed vintage country table frothing with flowery ware — take a theme and experiment with colour. Choose a level of formality. If you’re using delicate, porcelain plates and some silverware, make it all fine porcelain and cut glass in style at least. Going with stoneware blue and white, Irish spongeware or American '50s Fiesta ware — try a more relaxed rustic table — clear soda glass, dove-white cotton linens and lush garden flowers.
Royal Albert, Johnson Brothers and many English firms of the late war years made mass-produced tableware, but there are some gorgeous premiere collections — see Johnson’s Georgian-style Sheraton plates, based on watercolours of the mid-1700s. The His Majesty set with a fantastic big turkey, hand-decorated and edged in autumn fruits, is about €30 a plate on Etsy. 1930s Limoges? Widely available in lightly-used condition for some easy French charm. Look up the 1980s Pomona botanical prints of Portmeirion (England)— too delicious to just stick up on the wall.
Looking for a plate to make up a set? Try chinamatchers.co.uk, or chinasearch.co.uk
Bundles of silver-plated cutlery start around €25 in rubbed condition. Again, they can form harlequin sets and are easy to collect for each course. Don’t worry about the base metal showing through the distressed silver: Gently shine up what’s left on the surface. Bent tines can cut a lip.
Add some Irish linen for easy class. Do I have to say Jennifer Slattery? €190, embroidered for 12 napkins, jenniferslattery.com.
Vintage tea and coffee services can really warm up a conversation. No chipped cups or saucers, please. Here’s a guide I brewed earlier, and keep in mind, these beauties make matchless Christmas gifts: https://www.irishexaminer.com/property/homeandoutdoors/arid-20367308.html
Determined to buy a heritage new? just go directly to Wedgwood, and start patiently accruing a set of Tea Garden or Cuckoo. €60 for a cup and saucer, Brown Thomas.
For a serious new spend, Royal Copenhagen is still making its original Blue Fluted Half Lace porcelain dinnerware (clam-painted or "musselmalet") from about 1775, from €74 for a small plate, royalcopenhagen.com.
Le Creuset, known for its pots and pans, offer a French dinner service that lightly suggests its cookware in a range of familiar colours from €14.75 a bowl.
For a bit of 70s bohemian from a relatively young designer, pour over the work of Klaus Haapaniemi for the celebrated house of Iittala, with his folksy, intricate Finnish creatures and woodlands; Taika serving platters from €95. Don’t sling these printed pieces in the dishwasher and use lightly, for friends that really count, iittala.com
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