Food may be the star at the table, but were it not for the plate, the coq au vin and the tiramisu would have no stage.
Three times a day plates sit before us, and we pretty much ignore them–especially at cleanup time.
Yet when a man and woman marry, they promptly pick out sets.
When chefs serve sumptuous creations, they want the right canvas.
And when a plate gets broken by accident, it really gets your attention.
The plate is the anchor of a table, the vessel for our food, the nuts and bolts of everyday eating. We can talk all we want about food, but the plate comes first. It has to.
“You have to have dishes to eat off of,” says Kim Van Natta, manager of Bloomingdale’s Home Store in Newport Beach, Calif. “So why not make it fun?”
Look at popular plates today and you’ll see whimsy, bright splashes of color, bold and unusual designs, a sense of fun for the tabletop. Old traditions–cutesy floral designs, gold-rimmed formal china, patterns favored in your grandmother’s day–have been blown off the shelf.
“In the old days, your mom might have had one set of dinnerware,” Van Natta says. “Today people have two or three. People are doing more of an eclectic feel in formal and casual dishes.”
If thoughts of new dishes dance in your mind, or if you’re already worrying about finding the right plates for holiday entertaining, here’s a look at tabletop trends:
– Many retailers feature inexpensive dish lines. From department stores to mass merchandisers such as Target to specialty shops such as Cost Plus World Imports, you can find plates in sets or sold individually for little more than the food you might serve on them.
One way to create a new look each time you entertain is by using different plates that won’t cost an arm and a leg. A set of four yellow and green plates in the Italian-made Vineyard Collection from Target sells for $15.
Or buy an inexpensive set that blends with your regular set of dishes to create a new look, suggests cooking teacher Deborah Fabricant of Corona del Mar.
“If you go someplace like Cost Plus, you’re not spending a lot,” she says. “And, if you break a plate, you don’t feel so bad.”
– Colors are bold and bright. “What’s most important to our customers is color,” Van Natta says. One of Bloomingdale’s best-selling patterns is Jardin from Laure Japy, blue china from Limoges in France featuring big, bold fruits. An oversize plate, rimmed with big cherries, oranges and lemons, works as either a large dinner plate or a charger plate, a platter that a dinner plate is set on.
Blue always has been the most popular color in dish design, but plate designers have made it more vibrant. They’ve also tossed in other brights, especially yellow, to liven things up. Green is another color gaining ground.
Fall’s new color from Fiestaware, the simply styled dinnerware from the 1930s experiencing a renewed popularity, is cobalt blue. So far for Bloomingdale’s, though, the biggest selling color in Fiestaware has been chartreuse.
Villeroy & Boch, celebrating its 250th year of plate manufacturing, has found yellows and greens so hot that its new line of holiday plates is colored in muted shades of them.
“It’s not the traditional red and green,” company spokeswoman Gina Horan says. “But colorations are very hot.” The new pattern, French Garden Christmas, should be out this fall.
– Designs are dynamic or sophisticated. Sweet florals, or what china-store owner Adele Canetti-Winter sometimes calls “ditzy” floral patterns, have fallen off. In their place are patterns of more excitement and sophistication.
Another Villeroy & Boch casual pattern is Twist, a collection of four styles of plates that can be mixed and matched; one plate, rimmed with yellow, has a blue flower in a large pot in the center; another is rimmed with yellow flowers on a blue border; others are decorated with bright polka dots and swirls. The charming design has proved so hot that the store has trouble keeping some of it in stock.
Bright and charming may not be the words for a pattern from the late clothing designer Versace, Les Tresors de la Mer, for Rosenthal. But intricate, very elaborate and detailed, “a reflection of his clothing,” are the words Van Natta uses to describe the dishes, sold at Bloomingdale’s. The bone china plates are rimmed with seashells, scrolls and what look like gold bubbles in a border of orange. A matching tea cup has a handle that looks like a gold wing.
Calvin Klein has stepped into the dish arena, as well, bringing an austere look, or what Bloomingdale’s refers to as “Calvinistic.” An informal set of dinnerware from the designer, Thistle, features broad, almost flat, plain plates with the ever-so-slight pattern of a thistle.
– Casual place settings dominate. Once upon a time, newlyweds began a home with a formal set of china and a set of dishes for every day.
“A lot of people don’t do fine china anymore, just like a lot of new homes don’t feature dining rooms,” says Lisa Brankov, manager of the Crate & Barrel store in Santa Ana.
Instead, customers might buy two or three inexpensive sets of dishes and vary their use, she says.
Glass plates are a big seller for Crate & Barrel because they work for most uses and can be given a glamorous treatment with the addition of a charger plate. For the holidays, the store expects to sell lots of chargers in metallic colors: red, green, purple and gold.
Many customers aren’t interested in traditional place settings–salad plate, soup bowl, dinner plate, cup and saucer–and prefer to buy plates open stock, Brankov says, picking the plates they want.
It’s not unusual to see customers buying just one place setting of a pattern, then buying other single place settings of other patterns, but coordinating their look by similar color or style. Those customers, Canetti-Winter says, will entertain, setting each place with a different dish. Then guests choose where they want to sit, creating a sense of fun.
– White is always right. In fact, retailers say, white dishes are more popular than ever.
“You can do anything you want with white. You can dress it up, you can dress it down,” Van Natta says.
Some whites are more stylish than others; the No. 1 selling pattern at Bloomingdale’s is Louvre by Bernardaud, white dishes edged with scrollwork.
ENHANCE THE FOOD YOU SERVE
If you’ve toiled all day in the kitchen preparing for guests, you want the food to make an impression. The right plate can help you:
– Chefs overwhelmingly go with white dishes. The plate becomes a neutral as the culinary creation stands out. White also is the easiest plate to mix and match with other dishes and serving pieces, as well as linens. Even the room you’ll be serving in can figure into the look of your tabletop; if the furnishings are busy, a simple plate might be best.
– If white is not quite your cup of tea, food still looks best on a solid-colored plate, says Deborah Fabricant, a Corona del Mar, Calif., entertaining expert.
“You can see the food. If you have a print on a plate and you put food on it, it gets messier-looking. Presentations look better on a plate that’s clean-looking,” Fabricant says.
– If you do choose a patterned plate, consider one with the pattern on the rim and a white center. That way, your food still sits on the white. Or, pick an elaborate plate for certain styles of food–something in a sauce or pasta that will cover the design. That way you can enjoy the plates before, during and after eating.
– Figure out how much storage space you have. Some plates stack better than others. Some fit in the dishwasher better than others. Some plates have deep centers, others are barely sunken from the rim. A broad plate can accentuate the amount of food, making big servings seem not so big, small portions seem scanty.
– Don’t be afraid of color, but know that some experts will say food looks a little off-kilter on blue.
— The Orange County Register
