19th Century Meissen Portrait Plate of Young Girl with Necklace
By Meissen Porcelain
Located in West Palm Beach, FL
19th Century Meissen Portrait Plate of Young Girl With Necklace, With wide painted/ enamelled bronze edge with, gilt decorated surround, the well painted center portrait of a neoclas...
Porcelain
Three Faux Meissen Plates with Portraits of French Royalties
Located in København, Copenhagen
Three faux Meissen plates with portraits of French royalties.
Today you’re likely to bring out your antique and vintage porcelain in order to dress up your dining table for a special meal.
Porcelain, a durable and nonporous kind of pottery made from clay and stone, was first made in China and spread across the world owing to the trade routes to the Far East established by Dutch and Portuguese merchants. Given its origin, English speakers called porcelain “fine china,” an expression you still might hear today. "Fine" indeed — for over a thousand years, it has been a highly sought-after material.
Meissen Porcelain, one of the first factories to create real porcelain outside Asia, popularized figurine centerpieces during the 18th century in Germany, while works by Capodimonte, a porcelain factory in Italy, are synonymous with flowers and notoriously hard to come by. Modern porcelain houses such as Maison Fragile of Limoges, France — long a hub of private porcelain manufacturing — keep the city’s long tradition alive while collaborating with venturesome contemporary artists such as illustrator Jean-Michel Tixier.
Porcelain is not totally clumsy-guest-proof, but it is surprisingly durable and easy to clean. Its low permeability and hardness have rendered porcelain wares a staple in kitchens and dining rooms as well as a common material for bathroom sinks and dental veneers. While it is tempting to store your porcelain behind closed glass cabinet doors and reserve it only for display, your porcelain dinner plates and serving platters can safely weather the “dangers” of the dining room and be used during meals.
Add different textures and colors to your table with dinner plates and pitchers of ceramic and silver or a porcelain lidded tureen, a serving dish with side handles that is often used for soups. Although porcelain and ceramic are both made in a kiln, porcelain is made with more refined clay and is stronger than ceramic because it is denser.
On 1stDibs, browse an expansive collection of antique and vintage porcelain made in a variety of styles, including Regency, Scandinavian modern and other examples produced during the mid-century era, plus Rococo, which found its inspiration in nature and saw potters crafting animal figurines and integrating organic motifs such as floral patterns in their work.
Simple or sophisticated, equipped with console, cart or custom cabinetry, these stylish bar areas deserve a toast.
After synthetic dyes changed fashion, home goods and printed matter, it was only a matter of time till glass caught up.
Faye Toogood and John Pawson are among the list of plate designers.
Top interior designers show — and tell — us how to create delectable spaces for hosting dinner parties.
Perhaps best known as a Revolutionary War hero, Revere was also an accomplished silversmith, and this pot is now available on 1stDibs.
Clever objects like these make feasting even more festive.
Get to know the innovators behind the pottery countercultural revolution.
Glass slippers might be the stuff of fairytales, but glass handbags? Artist Joshua Raiffe has made them a reality, and they're far less delicate than you might imagine, but just as dreamy.