Blue and White China Mosaic Tray Top Side Table, Pique Assiette, c. 1950–1970

The Piece

A small painted side table whose top lifts off as a serving tray, the tray set with a hand-laid mosaic of broken blue and white china, the folk craft the French call pique assiette and the American trade calls memory ware or shard mosaic. The tray is a shallow wooden frame with a raised lip and a pair of swan-neck brass handles, and its field is paved edge to edge with shards cut from blue and white tableware: plain white porcelain, sprigged plates scattered with small cobalt flowers and leaves in the manner of English calico ware, and the scrolled rim borders of a darker Oriental pattern, all set in bright white grout. The maker composed them rather than scattering them. A row of the scrolled rim pieces runs around the outside as a frame, a band of the flowered shards sits inside it, a wide field of white fills the middle, and at the center a square medallion of nine small tiles cut from the dark border pattern anchors the whole, so that from across a room the top reads like a blue and white tile carpet.

The base is a table in its own right, built with an apron and four square tapered legs, each leg stepping out into a carved collar below the apron and then tapering to a small block foot, the pattern of the American occasional table of the second quarter of the century. The top of the base is rabbeted so that the tray drops into it and sits flush, and lifts away with the handles when the drinks go out to the garden. The whole base is under old white paint that has softened and chipped at the edges to show the earlier coats beneath, and the tray frame is painted to match.

Condition is sound and usable. The base stands square and firm, the tray seats properly in its recess, and the brass handles are tight. The mosaic is complete, with no missing shards; the grout shows the fine grime of outdoor use in its low points, and a few shards sit a little proud of their neighbors, as they do in any hand-laid piece. The paint is worn and chipped at the edges of the base, the tray lip and the legs, which reads as age and has been left as found. The table is offered as it is, cleaned but not repainted or regrouted.

History & Provenance

Setting broken china into cement and grout is an old thrift craft. Memory jugs and shard-covered flowerpots were made in American homes from the nineteenth century, and the French postman Raymond Isidore, who covered his whole house at Chartres in broken crockery between 1938 and 1964, gave the craft its name, Picassiette, the plate-stealer. In the United States the craft had its great revival after the Second World War, when mosaic kits, hobby tile and craft-shop grout put the technique in every garage, and the shard-topped tray, plant stand and side table became a fixture of the patio and the sunroom through the 1950s and 1960s. The blue and white version was the favorite, made from the chipped sprigged and willow plates that every household had in the back of the cupboard, and it was meant to recall the azulejo tile tables of Portugal and Spain that the magazines of the day were showing in California and Florida gardens. This one was made with more care than most: the pattern is planned, the border runs true and the tray was built to lift from a proper table base rather than sit on a stand.

No maker's mark is present and the table is offered as an unattributed American piece of the postwar craft revival. The dating rests on the materials and the construction rather than style alone: the square tapered legs with carved collars and the rabbeted top of the base point to an occasional table of about 1930 to 1950, and the white grouted shard mosaic, the brass swan-neck handles and the layered white paint are consistent with the tray having been made and the table finished between about 1950 and 1970.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

This is the small table that does two jobs. It stands beside a garden chair, a porch glider or a bedroom armchair as a side table with a surface that shrugs off a wet glass, and the top lifts away as a tray to carry the lemonade, the coffee or the dessert plates out and back. The blue and white reads as Portuguese, Delft or French country depending on what sits around it, and the chipped white paint makes it at home in a cottage, a farmhouse, a coastal room or a collected eclectic interior. For a shop or designer client it is the one-of-a-kind, hand-made accent table that photographs well, sells on the story of the broken plates, and fills the blue and white niche that buyers ask for all year.