Consider the Saucer

Over the years I have collected quite a few antique saucers.  Most date from the late eighteenth century through the first half of the nineteenth century and were made of porcelain in Europe or China for domestic use or export.  In most cases they were separated from their matching cups long before I bought them.

Collecting antique saucers can become rather
addicting, and it is easy soon to find oneself
with stacks and stacks of them!

I have collected antique saucers because they are pretty and also because they are usually affordably priced.  I have bought ones at junk and thrift stores for as little as fifty cents a piece and at specialist ceramics dealers for as much as several hundred dollars.  In general, though, I've paid much less than a hundred dollars a saucer for most of them.  These days I rarely buy any more for my collection because I already have so many of them that I find it difficult to justify adding to the stacks.

A saucer is a most convenient place to rest one's
flute of champagne . . .

I have collected saucers not just for their beauty and price, but also because I like to use them.  Not for their original purpose, though, of holding a cup of hot tea or coffee.  I have placed them on almost every end table in our house, both in the public rooms and in the bedrooms, where they are an attractive and useful alternative to plebeian coasters.  We have several of them sitting on chests of drawers, too, to catch keys, loose change, matchbooks, and the little odds and ends that one finds in one's pockets.  They are the perfect size for serving cocktail-hour nibbles.  When we set votive candles in a group of them along the dinner table they create the most attractive uplighting on our guests.  We also use them as dishes for small topiaries and to hold soap in bathrooms.  Sometimes we even use them as ashtrays when the rare friends who still smoke visit us.  Even though we gave up the habit years ago, we might occasionally join our friends in a cigarette or two—at least if we've been consuming cocktails during their visit, which is a pretty good bet around here.

. . . and so very handy for holding
one's keys and pocket incidentals, too!

Over time I plan on doing a number of posts featuring some of our prettier saucers.  My goal in doing so is that I hope it will give you pleasure to see them, Dear Reader, and also because I hope that it will inspire you to build a collection of your own—that is if you haven't one already—and to use them as we do at Darlington House.

Photographs by Boy Fenwick