Haviland & Co. Limoges Porcelain Plate, Pink Roses and Pale Blue Ribbons on a Moulded Scroll-and-Bead Blank, Ungilded, France, c. 1894–1931

The Piece

A white French porcelain plate that does its decorating twice — once in relief, and once in colour.

The blank is moulded. A fine band of beading rings the well, and the scalloped rim is broken at intervals by raised rococo cartouches and scrollwork, all of it left white. Run a finger across it and the ornament is there before any colour is.

Over that runs the painted decoration: a garland of pink roses and smaller blossoms carried on drifting green foliage, threaded through with pale blue ribbon streamers that loop and fall between the flowers. A single small spray with its own blue ribbon sits at the centre of the well.

There is no gold anywhere on the plate. The raised white scrollwork does the work that gilding does on other blanks, and the effect is quieter and considerably more modern.

The porcelain is thin, hard and white, and light passes through it.

Underneath are two marks. In green under the glaze, in script: Haviland, France. In orange-red over the glaze: Haviland & Co, Limoges.

History & Provenance

Two marks again, doing the same two jobs — but the green one here is a different mark from the one on the gilded Haviland plate, and it moves the date.

The green mark goes on under the glaze before the final firing and names the maker of the white body. The red mark goes on over the glaze after painting and names the decorator. Both being present means the plate was made and decorated at the Haviland works rather than sold out as a blank and painted by somebody else — which, given how many thousands of Limoges blanks were shipped to America and decorated by studios and amateurs, is the thing worth checking.

The particular green mark on this plate is the script Haviland France, and it is the most frequently found of all Haviland marks because it covers the firm's largest years: roughly 1894 to 1931. The older H & Co family of marks belongs to the late nineteenth century and runs earlier. So a plate marked H & Co sits ahead of one marked Haviland France, and this is the later of the two.

That range is wide, and it is wide honestly. The script mark stayed in use for the better part of four decades, nothing else on the plate narrows it, and a tighter date would be invention rather than evidence. What the mark does establish firmly is the outside limit: Haviland & Co. under Charles Edward Haviland ceased operations in 1931, so nothing carrying this pairing can be later.

The firm was an American business built on French clay. David Haviland ran a china shop in New York, went to France in 1840 to find a supplier, discovered that no French factory was making what American households actually wanted, and settled by the kaolin beds at Limoges. He founded his own works in 1853 to produce porcelain expressly for the American market. His son Charles ran it as Haviland & Co.; his son Théodore left in 1893 to found a separate firm under his own name. This plate is Charles's house.

Haviland decorations and blanks are indexed separately by collectors under Schleiger numbers. This pattern has not been matched to one here, and the plate is offered on its marks rather than on a pattern attribution.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

An antique plate with no gold on it is the useful kind, and they are harder to find than the gilded ones.

Gilding is what makes most antique china a display object: it cannot go in a dishwasher, cannot go in a microwave, and wears wherever it is touched. This plate has none. The ornament is moulded into the porcelain itself, which means it cannot rub off, and the piece will still look like this in another century.

It is also quieter than it sounds on paper. Pink roses and blue ribbons could be saccharine; at this scale, drawn this finely, against a white relief border and a wide plain well, the effect is delicate rather than fussy. It sits with plain white modern china on a table without either one looking wrong.

The relief is what to look at. A beaded ring and raised rococo cartouches carry shadow across the rim, and that shadow changes as the light in a room moves. Printed decoration cannot do that.

One plate goes further than a partial set. On a wall, on an easel on a shelf, or laid as a charger under a plain dinner plate, it does more work than eight matching pieces in a cupboard.

And the name is the one people know. Haviland is the most recognised name in antique table porcelain in America, and this one is marked twice — made and decorated at the works. Anyone who knows the field turns a plate over first.

It pairs naturally with other Haviland without matching it. Two different Haviland plates on a wall, one gilded and one not, one earlier and one later, read as a considered group rather than an orphaned pair.

A note on care. Hand wash in warm water with a soft cloth and dry at once. The absence of gilding makes this plate far more forgiving than most antique china, but the painted decoration still sits on a century-old glaze and modern dishwasher detergent is harsher than anything it was made for.

The tan line at the foot ring will usually lift with a paste of bicarbonate of soda and water left on it briefly and rinsed clean. Do not scour it and do not bleach it.

For food, use it for dry or cool service rather than as a daily dinner plate. Porcelain of this period predates modern standards for lead and cadmium in decoration and carries no certification to them, so cake, bread, fruit and cheese are sensible and a hot acidic meal is not.

Do not stack it directly on other plates without a felt pad or a paper round between, keep it out of direct sun, and hang it on a padded wire hanger or an easel rather than a bare spring hanger, which chips rims.