Collection: Tableware

Measure the cabinet before you choose the plates

The usual failure is not taste. It is that a stack of eight 11.5 inch (29 cm) dinner plates stands about 9 inches high and weighs close to 20 pounds, and the shelf it was bought for is 10 inches deep. The plates end up on the counter, then in a cupboard nobody opens, and the old set stays in service.

So take three measurements first: the depth of the shelf, the height between shelves, and the width of the bottom rack in your dishwasher. A plate wider than 11 inches fouls the tines in a lot of machines and has to be washed by hand, which decides whether you use it on a Tuesday.

The second decision is set or open stock. A boxed set of 16 gives you four of everything at a lower price per piece. Open stock lets you buy six dinner plates, six bowls and no side plates, which is closer to how most people actually eat, and lets you replace the one you break in a year without buying four.

Plate sizes, and why yours look empty

American dinner plates have grown about two inches since the 1960s. The same portion that filled a 9 inch plate then sits in the middle of an 11.5 inch plate now and reads as a small serving. That is worth knowing before you buy the largest option available.

Sizes are quoted as the outside diameter of the rim. The usable well is smaller, often by an inch and a half on a rimmed plate, which is why two plates listed at 11 inches hold visibly different amounts of food.

Porcelain, stoneware, glass or melamine

Everything about how a plate survives its first year comes from how hot the clay was fired and how thick the piece is. Porcelain is fired to around 2400 F and vitrifies, so the body itself absorbs almost no water and can be made thin. Stoneware fires lower, stays slightly more porous, and is made thicker to compensate.

Wall thickness decides how long the coffee stays hot

A thin porcelain cup gives up its heat to the room in a few minutes. A thick stoneware mug with a 5 mm wall takes longer to warm through and then gives that heat back slowly, so the last mouthful is drinkable rather than cold. The trade is that the mug takes some of the heat from your coffee to warm itself, which is what rinsing it with hot water first is for.

Volume matters more than most people check. A coffee maker measures a cup as 5 fl oz, so an eight cup pot fills three 13 oz mugs and a bit. Most mugs sold as standard hold 11 to 12 oz to the brim, meaning 10 oz of usable liquid once you leave room to carry it. If you drink one big coffee rather than three small ones, look for 15 oz and check that the handle takes two fingers, since a full 15 oz mug weighs over a pound.

Turn any mug over before buying. The unglazed ring on the base is what drags across a wooden table and what grinds against the mug below it in the cupboard. A ring that has been sanded smooth is a sign somebody finished the piece properly.

Glassware: the base does the work

A rocks glass with a heavy base is not decoration. Weight low down is what stops the glass going over when a sleeve catches it, and the thickness between your hand and the drink is what keeps ice from melting at your body temperature. A thin walled tumbler of the same volume tips at half the provocation.

Three volumes cover nearly everything: 8 to 10 oz for water and highballs, 10 to 12 oz for an old fashioned or a neat pour with ice, and 5 to 7 oz for wine served properly in a glass that looks half empty. Buy stackable glasses only if you have checked that they unstack; two straight sided tumblers of the same size will wedge, and the trick that frees them is cold water in the top glass and warm water around the bottom one.

If you pour hot drinks into glass, buy borosilicate. Ordinary soda lime glass cracks from thermal shock, which is the difference between the temperature at the inside face and the outside face, not the temperature itself.

Gray marks on white plates, and how to take them off

The gray streaks that appear on white plates after a few months are not scratches in the glaze. They are metal, worn off your flatware by the harder glaze underneath and left sitting on the surface. Detergent will not shift them, which is why they survive the dishwasher and keep building up.

A mildly abrasive cleanser with oxalic acid takes them off in under a minute of rubbing with a damp cloth, and a melamine sponge does the same job more slowly. Rinse well afterward and do not use either on a gold or platinum rim, or on hand painted decoration applied over the glaze, since both sit on the surface and come off with the marks.

Real scratches are a different story. Once flatware has cut into a soft glaze, the plate holds stains in the cuts and nothing brings the surface back. Stoneware in a mid tone color hides both problems, which is a good reason to keep the bright white plates for guests and eat off something darker on a Tuesday.

What survives the dishwasher and what does not

Dishwasher safe describes the glaze, not the decoration on top of it. Anything metallic goes dull within about 50 cycles and is out of the microwave for good, because a gold rim arcs. Decals applied over the glaze fade at the edges first. Anything with a wooden lid or handle, from a salt cellar to a decanter stopper, is hand wash only, since a hot cycle dries the wood out and splits it.

Load matters as much as the setting. Plates that touch each other chip at the rim, which is where nearly all dinnerware damage starts. Leave one slot empty rather than forcing the last plate in. Put glasses over the tines rather than between them so they cannot rock, and keep silver and stainless flatware in different baskets, because the two react in the wash and pit the silver.

Stacking does the rest of the damage. Felt pads or a folded paper towel between stacked plates costs nothing and stops the foot ring grinding into the face of the plate below.

Every piece here is a measured volume

A bowl is a portion you cannot argue with. Buy 20 oz cereal bowls and you will eat a 20 oz breakfast, buy 12 oz ones and you will eat less without deciding to. The same goes for a 15 oz mug and a wine glass filled to the widest point instead of a third of the way up.

That is the honest way to choose tableware: not by which pattern photographs best, but by how much of each thing you want in front of you, and then which shape holds exactly that. Serving bowls at 2 quarts feed four. Plates at 10.5 inches make a normal dinner look like dinner. Pick the volumes first and the collection assembles itself.