As a child, I learned that dinnerware carried its own quiet system of rules. There were the everyday plates: solid, dependable, and then there was the fine bone china, stored in higher cabinets, reserved for holidays, milestones, and evenings when guests filled the house with voices. Of course the fragile good china required handwashing due to the gold leaf pattern on many pieces. That was part of the ritual. You didn’t rush it. You dried each plate gently, like you were both preserving history and participating in it.
My mother, being an artist, brought her own kind of magic to those cabinets. She fell in love early with a Kentucky potter named Mary Alice Hadley, whose whimsical blue-and-white pieces made their way into every corner of our kitchen. Hadleyware was cheerful and unapologetically folksy; chickens with puffed-out chests, wide-eyed cows, plump pigs, horses mid-trot. Even our dogs had their own Hadley bowls. My mother liked to say that food tastes better when the plate smiles at you. And one of my favorite coffee mugs had the words “All Gone” painted on the bottom, a secret reward for finishing your last sip.
When my mother died, my sister received most of the Hadleyware, the pieces that had soaked up decades of breakfasts and birthdays. I kept several, and I treasure them, but the bulk of the collection, the daily art that defined our family’s meals, lives with her. In my own home, my everyday plates are Portmeirion (the Botanic Garden series) and Emma Bridgewater (Black Toast), sturdy and pretty and perfectly happy to whirl around the dishwasher. They fit the rhythm of my life now: practical, no-nonsense, ready for the next round.
Still, for Sunday dinner and family occasions, I keep the china on its shelf. Not because anyone told me I had to, but because some habits settle deep into the bones. They become part of how you think about care, about value, about the difference between ordinary days and the ones we believe deserve ceremony.
The other night, setting the table for my grandson Homer’s birthday dinner, I paused at the cabinet. My hand hovered over the good china. It would look beautiful on the table, timeless, elegant, a nod to my mother and to all the celebrations she shaped before me. For a moment, I imagined my granddaughter, Winnie’s face above one of those delicate plates, her excitement about Homer’s birthday dinner magnified by the quiet sophistication of porcelain.
But then reality nudged in. The dishwasher. I pictured the stack afterward, the scrubbing, the towel drying. I imagined one plate slipping in my hands, or a fine rim tapping too hard against the faucet. And so I closed the cabinet door gently and reached for the dishwasher-safe plates. Practicality won, as it so often does.
Only later, after everyone had gone home and the table was cleared, did the question return, not with regret but with curiosity: why? Why had I saved the china yet again? Had I inherited the idea that beauty must be protected, set apart, guarded until the “right moment”? And what, exactly, qualifies as that moment? If a child’s birthday dinner surrounded by family isn’t special enough, then what is?
The truth is, my mother used her Wedgewood or Spode china when hosting a dinner and the Hadleyware for family meals. She loved the Hadleyware so much that she never hesitated to set a whimsical pig or horse in front of a guest. To her, objects were meant to be loved, not preserved like fragile museum pieces. She lived with color and charm and humor right in the middle of ordinary life. And perhaps that’s part of the reason her kitchen felt like the heart of our home, it wasn’t staged for company; it was lived in with joy.
Maybe I’ve spent too long separating the “good” from the rest. Maybe I’ve been waiting for an occasion to justify the risk of a chip or a crack. But when I think back to my childhood table, the clatter of dishes, the soft glow of candlelight, the comfortable chaos, I realize that beauty didn’t come from perfection. It came from use. From meals shared. From hands passing plates across the table. From the everyday made meaningful simply because we gathered.
So now I’m asking myself a new question:
What am I saving these beautiful plates for?
Perhaps the answer is simple.
Perhaps the good china belongs at Tuesday dinners and lazy Sunday breakfasts.
Perhaps it belongs in the dishwasher risk zone, and in the memories we make today.
Perhaps beauty, like joy, is meant to be used up, lived with, passed around.
Maybe the real inheritance is not the plates at all, but the courage to enjoy them.
Kate Emery General is a retired chef/restaurant owner who was born and raised in Casper, Wyoming. Kate loves her grandchildren, knitting, and watercolor painting. Kate and her husband, Matt are longtime residents of Cambridge’s West End where they enjoy swimming and bicycling.
