My husband and I are about to move into a new house. It has a more rustic, southwestern feel and I’m thinking about replacing my dinnerware (Williams Sonoma, plain white bistro ware). I haven’t bought dinnerware in over 10 years (this WS was great - durable, no chipping etc) and I’m a little surprised that NOTHING apparently comes with saucers anymore.
I like a cup on a saucer, it’s a great place to put a spoon or teabag. Saucers are also just handy little things to have (imo). Is this a trend that happened in the 10 years since I’ve bought plates?
(any links to gorgeous plates in a golden, warm orange or brick red color would be appreciated, saucers optional).
I’ve not looked at other lines lately, but Fiestaware generally offers place settings in either a 4-piece with mug or 5-piece with cup and saucer varieties.
I quit using saucers some years ago. I still have a couple of tea sets with saucers and cups, but mostly I use mugs. I have a set of salad and dessert plates, which will accommodate either a sandwich or a couple of mini donuts, if I’m eating something with my tea. However, I make my tea in the kitchen, and when I’m done brewing it, I toss out the teabag. And I leave my spoon in my mug.
Maybe there are just people out there who are unhappy with the way you care. I know I haven’t seen any saucers. But I guess you’d need some that would look like a Western sky.
Wow, that’s really bizarre. I just checked at Pfaltzgraff (maker of my plates, which I thought had mugs, but … hm, maybe not …). Nothing in the 400 or so sets I looked at, so I did a search for “saucer” came up with not a whole lot.
My guess is that you might be able to purchase something similar as an extra to a set, but it sure doesn’t look like they’re standard anymore.
I switched over to Fiestaware about a year ago, the 5 piece sets come with a cup and saucer. Plus they come in lots of bright colors too. Most of my stuff is in peacock and sunflower.
Crate & Barrel still has a lot of sets with saucers. Here’s one in red.
Here’s one from Macy’s that’s rustic-ish, with saucers.
…aaaaaand, that’s about all I can find. I think saucers have been confined to dainty, bone china dinnerware with floral patterns. Casual diners get mugs and let the dog lick their spoons.
I’ve got about 5-6 complete dinnerware sets, and they all have saucers. Of course none are newer than 20 years. I also have a set of mugs, which I use instead of the cups and saucers. So what if they don’t match?
Nah, the spoons stay in the mugs. I see saucer sized plates being sold in various stores, but they are not really saucers because they don’t have the indentation and ridge for cups that true saucers have. I’ve seen cup and saucer sets being sold, but usually they are indeed dainty bone china with floral patterns.
When I first got married, I had nothing in the way of household goods, so I bought a lot of stuff that was the cheapest available. One of those things was a set of melamine dishes, which contained a dinner plate, salad plate, bowl (for both soup and cereal), cup, saucer, large drinking glass, and smaller drinking glass, for four people. It’s been a while since I’ve shopped for dinnerware (I inherited some from my grandmother), but I think that these sets usually come with mugs now. I confess, though, that I rarely look at dinnerware in retail stores…I’ll go to the thrift shop!
I prefer mugs myself, because if I’m going to drink a cup of tea, I prefer to drink 10 ounces or so at a time. I don’t sit at the dining or breakfast table with a teapot, I fix one cup of tea, and then I take it to the computer desk or into the den. I have a couple of sets of mugs, and then some random mugs that I picked up at the dollar store.
It seems that teacups are now mostly being used as pincushions.
My saucers were long ago carefully placed in storage with my doilies, crystal salt dish/silver spoon, velocipede, reaper, mechanical calculator and my gramophone after I finally asked myself, “Why the hell do I have these things?”
There was recently a TV news report on how plates have gone from a standard 9 inch size to a current standard of 12 inch. They mentioned how this has helped make Americans fatter.
The old 9 inch plate takes less food to fill it, but you still felt you were getting a good serving and it was enough to eat.
The “newer” 12 inch plate looks sad with “only” two eggs and two pieces of bacon, so you put more on it - thus eating more every time you use that larger plate.
My guess is the same has happened to cups and saucers. Cups held less, which was one of the reasons mugs caught on so quickly - almost double the coffee or tea and less running back to fill it. Plus, a mug was stand-alone, so you don’t need two hands to carry it to your desk or patio or wherever.
I am sure the day is coming where kids will look at a saucer and wonder why people had them back then.
I suppose the one good thing is that it takes less energy and water to wash saucers that, for the most part, were/are seldom really used other than to hold the cup and the occasional tea bag or spoon.
This doesn’t help you find a good set of cups and saucers, but might help figure out why they are getting harder to find.
I have a Corelle set with cups and saucers that I and all my friends use. We’re in our early 20s.
Of course, the Corelle itself is thirty years old, if not older–it was my dad’s bachelor set as a gift from HIS parents, then his set while living with his best friend, then when he moved in with my mom, and finally retired when they got some nicer Pfaltzgraff stuff. At which point it was packed into a box so I could get it when I moved out.
Yes, my dishes were picked out by my grandparents. But they’re very modern…for the late 70s, that is.
If the Dope had been around a hundred years ago, someone might have asked what happened to bone plates. They’re small flat dishes with a curve that lets them fit neatly around part of a dinner plate, and they were for depositing bones. I tried to find a link but china + bone + plate has too many hits, none of them for these plates. I have a friend who collects them – they’re kinda cool, and still useful.
I still have some saucers from a set of Corelle that I bought in the 70’s. I liked 'em and wouldn’t mind seeing them come back. Sometimes even a mug needs a saucer.
I know what bone plates are, though I don’t remember when and where I learned about them. I think that they’re actually pretty neat, and useful for certain menus.
Cups and saucers are useful when you are serving several people from a pot, in a somewhat formal setting. If you are having a tea party, for instance, you will need at least a tea pot and a cup and saucer for each person plus a creamer and sugar bowl. AND you will need bread and butter sandwiches, and cucumber sandwiches sometimes. For a single drinker, it’s less trouble to just use a mug and doctor the drink in the serving area, and then carry it wherever. If we serve drinks to company, maybe we’ll serve coffee or tea, but we might also serve sodas or alcoholic drinks instead. Our eating and drinking and hosting habits have changed.
I mean what’s the use of having a saucer under a cup. Just about the only thing is to hold stuff that came out of the cup (a spoon, a teabag) but then the leftover liquid goes into the saucers and hits the bottom of the cup, making the bottom of the cup dirty and possibly drippy.