Royal Worcester Worcester Herbs, A Kitchen Garden in Porcelain

Some tableware patterns seem designed primarily for the dining room.

Royal Worcester Worcester Herbs feels as though it belongs just as naturally in the kitchen.

With its named herbs, botanical illustrations and fresh green detailing, the range has the appearance of an old kitchen garden translated onto porcelain. It is decorative without being especially formal, and practical enough that it was produced in an enormous variety of everyday, serving and oven-to-table pieces.

A Botanical Pattern With a Practical Purpose

Worcester Herbs appeared around 1990 and remained in production for many years, continuing into the 2000s.

The decoration is based around individual herbs and plants, usually identified by name, with different pieces featuring different varieties.

Peppermint, sage, parsley, wild thyme, rosemary, bay, black mustard and other familiar kitchen garden plants all appear across the range.

The effect is rather like turning the pages of an old botanical reference book, except these illustrations ended up on dinner plates, mugs and casserole dishes.

More Than One Herb

One of the things that makes Worcester Herbs particularly enjoyable as a complete service is that not every piece looks exactly the same.

Different herbs appear across different plates, mugs, bowls and serving pieces, so a table laid entirely with Worcester Herbs still has plenty of variation.

Some pieces combine more than one plant. Others concentrate on a single herb, often with the botanical illustration forming the focal point of the design.

Butterflies also appear on some versions, particularly inside certain cups and mugs, adding another small detail that can easily be overlooked until the piece is actually being used.

A Range Made for the Whole Kitchen

Worcester Herbs was produced on a scale that goes far beyond the normal dinner service.

There are, of course, dinner plates, breakfast and salad plates, tea plates, cups, saucers, mugs and bowls.

But the range also includes casseroles, roasting dishes, flan and quiche dishes, lasagne dishes, serving platters, gravy boats, jugs, entrée dishes and hors d'oeuvre dishes.

Then come the kitchen accessories.

Herb jars, butter dishes, ramekins, storage pieces, napkin rings, cake servers and even pestle and mortar sets were produced to coordinate with the tableware.

Royal Worcester also used Worcester Herbs on its famous egg coddlers, which somehow feels particularly appropriate. Few ranges are more obviously suited to a kitchen breakfast table.

The Egg Coddlers

Royal Worcester had been producing egg coddlers long before Worcester Herbs appeared.

The Worcester Herbs versions arrived in the early 1990s and were made in several sizes.

They carry the same botanical decoration as the tableware and have become collectable pieces in their own right, particularly because the different herb designs encourage people to find more than one.

They were not simply decorative. The porcelain coddler was designed for cooking an egg gently in hot water, giving the piece a very definite practical purpose.

Although many now spend their retirement on kitchen shelves, they were made to work.

Green Trim, Gold Trim and Other Variations

As with many long-running tableware ranges, Worcester Herbs is not quite as straightforward as the name might suggest.

The most familiar version uses green trim, but a gold trimmed version was also produced.

More importantly for anybody replacing an existing service, the range changed during its long production life.

Shapes, sizes and manufacturing locations varied, and pieces carrying the same Worcester Herbs decoration are not always identical.

This is particularly noticeable with plates, casseroles and some of the larger serving ware.

Made in England... and Elsewhere

Earlier Worcester Herbs pieces are commonly marked Made in England, but later production was not confined to Worcester.

Examples can also be found marked Portugal, Czech Republic and Bangladesh.

This does not mean that one is necessarily the right or wrong version. It does mean that somebody replacing a piece from an established service should look beyond the pattern name alone.

Check the backstamp.

Check the diameter.

And where possible, compare the shape with the piece you already own.

A dinner plate called Worcester Herbs may still differ slightly from another Worcester Herbs dinner plate produced at a different time or factory.

Why the Design Works

The appeal of Worcester Herbs is not difficult to understand.

It has colour without being loud, decoration without becoming fussy, and enough white space to keep the whole design feeling fresh.

The botanical subject matter also suits the purpose of the pieces unusually well.

Rosemary on a roasting dish, herbs on a casserole and botanical decoration around serving ware somehow feel entirely at home.

There is a coherence between the subject and the object that some decorative tableware never quite achieves.

From Dinner Plate to Roasting Dish

It is also one of those ranges where collecting can become slightly dangerous.

You may begin because you need another dinner plate.

Then you discover the pasta bowls.

Then the roasting dish.

Then perhaps an herb jar.

And suddenly the kitchen contains considerably more rosemary-themed porcelain than originally planned.

The sheer number of pieces produced means Worcester Herbs can be expanded gradually rather than treated purely as a fixed dinner service.

Replacing Royal Worcester Worcester Herbs

Because the range was produced for so long and in so many different forms, Worcester Herbs still appears reasonably regularly on the pre-loved market.

That does not mean every piece is easy to find.

Everyday plates and cups may appear quite frequently, while particular casseroles, serving dishes, lids and less common accessories can take considerably longer.

Matching the correct production version can also be just as important as finding the right piece.

At MrPottery we currently catalogue a very extensive selection of Royal Worcester Worcester Herbs replacement china, including everyday tableware, serving pieces, ovenware and accessories.

A Pattern That Belongs in the Kitchen

Worcester Herbs may carry the Royal Worcester name, but there is very little drawing-room preciousness about it.

This is tableware designed to be cooked with, served from and eaten from.

Its botanical decoration gives it character, but the breadth of the range tells the more important story.

It was made for a working kitchen.

And more than thirty years after the first pieces appeared, plenty of it is still doing exactly that.