Dinner Plate, Breakfast Plate, Tea Plate... Why Did We Need So Many?

Once upon a time, apparently, one plate was not enough.

A reasonably comprehensive dinner service might contain dinner plates, breakfast plates, tea plates, bread and butter plates, dessert plates and perhaps luncheon or fish plates as well.

Today, many starter dinner sets are considerably simpler.

You get a dinner plate and a side plate.

Job done.

Except that the modern side plate is increasingly not all that small. At around 7 to 8.5 inches across, many now sit somewhere between what an older service would have called a tea plate and a breakfast plate.

So why did we once need all those different sizes, and are we gradually settling on a new normal?

The Dinner Plate Is the Easy One

We will start with the straightforward bit.

The dinner plate is normally the largest flat plate in a tableware range and was intended for the main course.

Older examples can vary considerably, but something around 10.25 inches is extremely common, with modern dinner plates frequently a little larger, sometimes as much as 11".

So far, so sensible.

It is when we move down a size that the terminology becomes rather more interesting.

Breakfast Plate, Salad Plate or Dessert Plate?

A plate of roughly 8 to 9 inches might be called a breakfast plate by one manufacturer, a salad plate by another and a dessert plate by somebody else.

Sometimes the name reflected how the manufacturer expected the plate to be used.

Sometimes it reflected the market the range was being sold into.

And sometimes it seems that pottery manufacturers simply enjoyed ensuring that replacement china dealers several decades later would have something to argue about.

At MrPottery we often use combined descriptions such as breakfast/salad plate and the smaller starter/dessert plate, because the same basic size may have been sold, of thought of by customers, under different names.

For replacement purposes, the diameter is usually far more useful than becoming too attached to the wording.

Then Came the Tea Plate

The traditional tea plate is smaller again.

It was designed for the sort of things that appeared alongside a cup of tea: sandwiches, cake, biscuits, scones and other relatively civilised portions of food.

Tea services were often sold with cups, saucers and matching tea plates, the combination commonly known as a trio.

In many twentieth-century British dinner services, the tea plate became one of the standard sizes alongside the dinner and breakfast plates and/or starter plates.

It also became extraordinarily useful.

A tea plate might have started life beside a cup and saucer, but plenty ended up carrying toast, sandwiches, cake, children's lunches and anything else that did not seem substantial enough to justify a dinner plate.

What About the Side Plate?

This is where modern terminology has begun to simplify things.

Today, we tend to use side plate as a fairly broad description for the smaller plate accompanying a dinner plate.

But historically that job could have been divided between several pieces.

A bread and butter plate might be quite small. A tea plate was slightly more generous. A breakfast or luncheon plate larger again.

The modern side plate increasingly tries to cover several of those jobs at once.

The Modern Side Plate Has Grown Up

Look at many contemporary starter dinner sets and the arrangement is wonderfully straightforward: one dinner plate and one side plate.

What is interesting is the size of that second plate.

At around 7 to 8 inches, it is often considerably larger than the little side plates found in some older services.

In fact, it may sit almost exactly between a traditional tea plate and breakfast plate.

That makes a lot of sense for the way we eat today.

The same plate can handle toast at breakfast, sandwiches at lunchtime, cake in the afternoon, a starter in the evening or simply a smaller meal when a full dinner plate feels unnecessary.

One plate has effectively absorbed several older jobs.

Which May Be Creating a New Standard

For everyday tableware in particular, this may well influence what we come to regard as the normal two-plate service.

A large dinner plate for the main meal.

A generous side plate for almost everything else.

It is simpler to manufacture, simpler to sell and probably better suited to modern households that do not necessarily want cupboards containing six different plate sizes.

That does not mean the older terminology will disappear overnight.

Traditional patterns remain in use, vintage tableware remains popular and manufacturers still produce salad, dessert and speciality plates.

But at the everyday end of the market, the larger multi-purpose side plate may gradually become the size against which future generations measure everything else.

Why This Matters When Replacing China

All of this becomes rather important when you are trying to replace a plate.

If somebody tells us they need a side plate, that can mean almost anything from a small bread and butter plate to something approaching the size of an older breakfast plate.

The safest thing to do is simple.

Measure it.

Measure straight across the plate from edge to edge and, if possible, check the backstamp too.

A description such as “Johnson Brothers tea plate” may narrow things down, but “Johnson Brothers tea plate, 6.75 inches” is considerably more useful.

Likewise, if your existing plate measures 8 inches, do not be surprised if one seller describes it as breakfast, another as salad and somebody else simply calls it a side plate.

Different Names, Same Job

There is a temptation to assume that tableware terminology follows a precise set of rules.

It really does not.

Potteries changed terminology. Retailers used their own descriptions. Export markets had different preferences. And customers themselves often adopted whatever name made sense at home.

So while we try to identify pieces as accurately as possible, sometimes two descriptions can both be perfectly reasonable.

The plate has not changed.

Only the label has.

Perhaps We Never Needed Quite So Many

There is something rather pleasing about a complete older dinner service with every conceivable plate size represented.

It reflects a time when meals were more structured and the table itself played a larger role in how food was served.

But there is also something refreshingly practical about the modern approach.

Dinner plate.

Decent-sized side plate.

Get on with lunch.

And if that larger side plate continues to become the everyday standard, future replacement china dealers may have a slightly easier job than we do.

Although somehow, I doubt the pottery industry will let us off quite that easily.