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Dishes
When one cooks a great meal, one wants to plate it on a great plate. Chefs go to extremes for plating dishes. Restaurateurs include in their massive budgets designs for personalized dishes, glassware and even cutlery.
Grant Achatz and others of his genre of cooking even configure and convolute serving pieces for the month's tasting tour or Omakase. Brides pay special attention to 'Selections', usually Bone China to last a lifetime serving special meals to special people in a special marriage. Antique dealers look for odds and ends of Bone China or Crystal to sell at inflated costs.
There exist companies and online retailers who specialize in finding discontinued patterns to replace a broken plate or cup from an old Bone China pattern.
In a lifetime, one collects an amazing amount of tzotchkes; I am no different. In fact, I have reached an age where I want to divulge myself of all these things, these objects d'arts with which I no longer find use nor have the energy to dust or keep clean and sitting on display.
I have so much, that even packing into a dozen boxes for what my children might use later on in life, still leaves me with so much I want to puke.
First because of the ridiculous amounts of money I have laid out in a lifetime, and second because I have no use for them anymore and feel saddened that when I make a dinner usually there are only six of us and eight if my single children join us for a Holiday celebration. Any more people and I make it buffet-style.
So, in my youthful idiocy in purchasing at the time, I chose one of the more expensive single place settings that Royal Crown Derby (I actually used to, and still do, pronounce it Darby and not Derby) made back in the 80's spending nearly $500.00 for one place setting including the soup bowl. "Old Imari by Royal Crown Derby"
In Fine Bone China, a place setting is sold separate to the soup bowl; each usually costing the same amount of money. The logic, I suppose, being that everybody serves soup so why make it part of the package? The marketing people figured that they could charge just as much for the single soup bowl as they lure the consumer in with a good price on a place setting, thereby making double the amount of money.
Those sucky brides.
Of course, no doubt there are far more expensive sets out there as I could imagine the Queen of England serves on and in the White House for their State Dinners. However, for me, in Montreal where I don't live in a social scene of epic magnitudes; this place setting was the most expensive in my collection.
I say 'Collection' because unlike most Brides of the time; I did not buy one entire set but instead chose full place settings of different sets of Bone China, for fear of ever breaking a plate: the logic being, worst case scenario, I would have to replace just one place setting if anything pattern had become discontinued or irreplaceable. So when I set a table; each place setting is different. (Fritz & Floyd also came out with a salad plate called Old Imari which I also purchased. Each place setting for 16 had a co-ordinating extra salad plate which meant using an Excel sheet to keep track of which extra salad plate went with its place setting)
THE EXCEL LIST
The following is THE list which is strictly adhered to when setting my table....which takes forever to set...
Caplan Duval P.P. Plan number 6467
16 Service Plates Gold Beads
1: Royal Daulton Martinique place set + soup 2: Royal Daulton Alice + soup 3: Royal Crown Darby Carlton +soup 4: Noritake Icon + soup 5: Gladstone + soup 6: Alabaster Gold + soup 7: Royal Crown Darby Old Imari + soup 8: Wedgewood Old Country Rose + soup 9: Wedgwood Curzon + soup 10: Aynsley empress cobalt + soup 11: Mikasa Contessina 12: Royal Crown Darby-Chardonnay 13: Wedgewood Cornucopia + soup 14: Aynsley georgian cobalt
