This time of year is always so much fun. We love to celebrate the season in high fashion and what better way to do that than with bone china, fine linens, candlelight and all the right accessories. Once you realize how amazing your table looks…and how easy it was to create…you’ll find more occasions throughout the year to bring the formal fashion into your everyday life.
If you are feeling like your bone china needs a wake up call, try adding a splash of style with a charger plate (often called a buffet plate). Charger plates allow you to mix and match patterns for an entirely new look without investing in a complete set of china. The buffet plate can be layered under your dinner plates for dramatic height in your tablescape, but they are no longer relegated to strictly decorative duty. We use buffet plates as extra serving platters for during meals and to showcase desserts, appetizers and finger foods at cocktail parties. Our buffet plates can be used as dining plates, which provides a much-needed additional service round if you’re serving multiple courses.
We’ve shared some of our favorite buffet plate and bone china pairings as inspiration. It’s easy to find a charger that complements white china, but we know it can be intimidating to pair a charger with a more colorful pattern. There are no rules about how to mix and match china patterns and chargers, but you may find it helpful to match your the predominant color in your charger to a favorite color in your china pattern as we’ve done by pairing the Classic Buffet Plate in Turquoise with our Aureus dinnerware below.
Our formal bone china patterns (premium porcelain) may look elegant and delicate, but they are strong enough for everyday use. Bone china is thin but very flexible, which makes it one of the most durable materials for dinnerware. In fact, Villeroy & Boch’s premium porcelain is even dishwasher safe (as long as it is not metallic). This is a point that we cannot drive home enough. You don’t need the holidays to enjoy your formal dinnerware. We hope you continue to find more and more reasons to bring out the good stuff. Our favorite reason? “It makes me feel special”.
