Dinner service -white bone china??

[Martha]

Sounds nice Mozzie! Do you have any pics?

[Mozzie]

Not of my china - I never thought about photographing that!

[rosebud]

Thanks everyone. In the end I decided to go with the Royal Worcester white bone china - microwave and dishwasher proof.

It is still being produced and I will be getting some spares anyway. Let's hope I won't regret it.

[Windy]

Too late , but Denby stoneware here.

It's glaze won't crack in a dishwasher and it doesn't get chipped easily. We lost one dinner plate out of 16 dinner plates, 16 side plates and 16 bowls last year. It just disappeared so I don't know if it got broken, but this has proved beyond doubt to me that buying cheap is a false economy as we lost about a dozen items the year before.

[elena]

Martha wrote:

In the right place, it would be lovely to go with good bone china and not worry too much about it being all matching. I've been to several restaurants recently where everything has been eclectic, with the plates all different, and chosen to match the dish, it's a lovely, homely effect.

You'd need to have a confident eye for style but it could be very charming in a cottage. Perhaps you could go for all white, but different types - some fluted, scalloped etc, but all really good white bone china.

I make sure everything we buy is white and then over the years have tried not to worry too much over whether all the pieces come from the same set.... as long as the shapes & sizes are pretty much the same I wonder how many guests actually notice if they're not all identical. Life's too short...!

It's glasses/wine glasses etc that I find harder to manage as they get broken a lot more often than plates & I find they're harder to match unless you've gone for the really cheap std wine glass. With 7 gites though I can usually manage to juggle sets around & buy new ones for one gite at a time.

FWIW we have some Ikea 365 & I have been very disappointed in them - lots chipped over the years and almost all marked with grey lines after being in the dishwasher.

Elena
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[Hells Bells]

I'll check for grey lines but in 7 years I've only replaced 1 plate (dropped by my neice), and a cereal bowl.

[Martha]

It's glasses/wine glasses etc that I find harder to manage

This was a real problem for us, I don't think the IKEA glass is very good quality and we were getting through boxes and boxes of them, both tumblers and wine glasses

We switched a while ago to classic bistro tumblers for water (Picardie from Duralex) and some wine glasses we found in a local restaurant which looked like they were decades old and still going, from La Rochere - "Coteau" pattern but they do a variety if this doesn't suit. They weren't cheap but we have had to replace about one glass a year since then, they are tough as nails.

[Naomi]

Nisbets is where I get my white china. It's durable and easily replaceable. You can get lots of it as they are always having offers.

It's better to offer too much than too little.

http://www.nisbets.co.uk/

If you are near their showroom in Avonmouth, Bristol, they have a showroom with lots of bargains. That is where I get the extras like serving dishes etc.