Plate Presentations

I stopped dead in my tracks while wandering through the dazzling magic kingdom of the Park Avenue Armory’s International Show, and it was not Bernd Goeckler’s Ado Chale 1960s astonishing desk, nor Kagedo’s glorious pair of tiger screens, or even Lost Art's scintillating Bush" sculpture by Harry Bertoia. It was Röbbig München’s towering display of intricately detailed, delicately water-gilded white Meissen porcelain, hung against an impressive wall of aubergine silk jacquard.Hung before me was a portion of Count Heinrich von Brühl’s commission of porcelain, executed by the royal porcelain manufacturer of Meissen between the years 1738 and 1741. To keep this in perspective, the count commissioned 2,000 pieces (I guess he had a lot of friends). The fabrication of this exquisite service came about only 30 years after a German potter in Meissen had discovered the secret Chinese process of making porcelain—a huge thrill for the luxury market. Since the 14th century, royalty and their nobles were frustratingly dependent on the unstable, expensive trade routes to the Orient in order to secure these treasured wares. These well-guarded secrets found their way to the city of Meissen, ostensibly the first craftsmen to discover them, and soon spread to Royal Saxon and Dresden a few years later, then to Spode in England around 1732, Royal Copenhagen in 1772 and ultimately to Wedgwood around 1840.

The “Swan Service,” so it has been called, captures its name from the dramatic reliefs of swans, gliding in pairs and trailed by goslings hiding among cattails, with an occasional stork flying overhead. All of this sculpted relief is rendered in transparent, gleaming, white glaze punctuated with delicate strokes of burnished gold, accentuating the lightly Rococo tracery on their rims.

It was not simply the beauty of this important china service that stopped me dead in my tracks—it was the bold, dramatic method of display, arranged according to size in a symmetrical manner, punctuated by brackets holding tureens, sauce boats and covered candy bowls. The scale of the display covering the entire 12-by-20-foot wall of the booth contributed to the magnitude of the effect. And in this vetted Armory Fair, where masterpieces of modern and contemporary art and artifacts reign like kings and queens, this display was jaw-dropping and surprisingly up-to-date and revitalizing at the same time.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised, because as I leafed through various shelter magazines, I discovered a reemergence of porcelain, pottery and crockery displays everywhere.

In the past few years, we have remarked at the abundance of fine antique china going for a pittance at auction houses, along with the disappearance of many purveyors of old porcelain. But as prices tumble, clever designers pick through the undervalued troves and fling them on their walls.

China display is a three-dimensional alternative to prints, art or mirrors, given that antique china services offer you a variety of shapes such as elongated olive dishes, finger bowls, soup tureens and turkey platters. A large display can inexpensively transform a dull bare Sheetrock expanse into a tour de force. One magazine showcased a large set of hand-painted Dresden porcelain lining the dark terracotta walls of an innocuous staircase. Your eyes suddenly spiraled up this enchanting stairwell.

Now, to achieve this, plaster brackets—available at any purveyor of plaster moldings—can be adhered to the wall and painted in the color of the wall, resulting in a new architectural element. This allows for the seamless display of the three-dimensional porcelain pieces, which you can intersperse between the flat hung plates. Decorative carved brackets would work as well.

Available at hardware, craft and lamp stores, spring-loaded plate hangers are a safe way of hanging your platters and chargers, though bear in mind that the plate’s diameter corresponds to the plate hanger’s designated size and weight constraints. I have indeed broken a plate or two overstretching the limits.

Plates hung on a wall also can help a mirror that is too narrow, by flanking it, or they can fill the space between a low window or door case molding and the crown above. Though at home often hung in a kitchen or dining room, porcelain can also spice up an entry hall, or even hang on the shelves of much-too-crowded bookcases. Plates hung over the doors of entrances—out of children’s reach—can lend importance to that port of entry.

In order to deflect one’s attention from my 1920s crackled porcelain subway tile, I hung turn-of-the-century creamware porcelain right over the tile surface. The effect was beguiling, as the antique creamware’s perforations let one spy through to the same crackled tile beneath, creating a kind of creamware bas relief.

Though glass breakfronts, now almost considered a furniture piece of the past, can still hold a striking collection of china, country plate racks, where plates lean forward while anchored in a plate rail groove, can be effective, and collections can more easily be utilized and rotated according to season.

My family’s Thanksgiving tradition as I grew up included unveiling great-grandfather Searcy Ridge’s Dresden porcelain. While carefully unzipping their cases, lifting out these precious pieces of china, and sifting out the lace protectors, my mother would tell us of my great-grandparents' whirlwind romance that took them by ship to Germany right before the outbreak of World War I. She would talk of how infatuated Searcy was with opera, and how, therefore, all the hand-painted, gilded scenes are from Wagner. The graceful dessert cups were jewel-toned with a hint of opalescence.

This very special collection was handed down from my grandfather to my mother and finally to me. Though it is quite lavish and ornate, I still believe that I can introduce these wonderful memories onto the walls of my modern New York apartment.

And while many of you unveil your family’s heirlooms once a year, while preparing your Thanksgiving table, you might envision these plates, chargers, teacups, gravy boats and tureens in a more permanent, vertical spot, as art-like accessories! Perhaps they might grace the walls of your rooms with their dimensional luminescence. And more than their innate striking beauty, they may also conjure up fond memories for which you may always be grateful.

"