A table that works: porcelain, crystal, linen

Most tableware is bought for an imagined dinner and used at a real one. The imagined dinner has twelve guests and good behaviour. The real one has six people, a dishwasher afterwards and somebody knocking a glass with a sleeve. Buy for the second and the objects last decades.

Plates

Porcelain is fired hotter than stoneware, which vitrifies the body and makes it harder, denser and thinner for the same strength. That thinness is why porcelain feels expensive and why it chips less at the rim: there is less material to catch and the material there is harder. Bone china is porcelain with bone ash added, which makes it translucent, whiter and slightly tougher again, and it is entirely dishwasher safe in modern production.

The vulnerable point on any plate is the rim, and the vulnerable design is a rolled or fluted edge that catches on the rack. A plain coupe shape with a clean edge survives a household. Anything with metal decoration, gold or platinum banding, cannot go in a microwave and will lose its band to dishwasher detergent within a few years regardless of what the box claims.

Glasses

Lead crystal is a thing of the past for practical purposes. Modern lead free crystal uses barium or zinc oxide, has the same refractive brilliance, is harder, is dishwasher safe and does not leach anything into wine. Machine blown lead free crystal at a sensible price is the correct answer for the six glasses you use weekly.

Mouth blown glass is thinner at the rim, lighter, and genuinely better to drink from. It is also fragile enough that a real household will break two a year, which is a decision rather than a fault. Keep four of them for the evenings that deserve them and do not let them near a dishwasher rack where they can touch anything else.

• One good universal wine glass beats a cupboard of specialist shapes. A large bowl that tapers to the rim works for nearly everything.
• The stem matters more than the bowl for breakage. A pulled stem, drawn from the same piece as the bowl, survives far better than one joined to it.
• Wash by hand in warm water with no detergent on the bowl, or put them in the machine and accept the losses. The hybrid, rushing them under a tap, is what breaks them.

Buy the glasses you will use on a Tuesday. The ones for Christmas are a different purchase and there should be four of them.

Linen

Linen napkins are the clearest case in the house of a material that improves with use. Flax fibre is stronger wet than dry, which is why linen survives washing that destroys cotton, and it softens with every cycle while cotton goes thin. A set of linen napkins bought now is a set your children will inherit, faded, soft and better than it started.

The number to look for is weight in grams per square metre. Under 150 is too light for a napkin and will go transparent. Around 170 to 200 is right. The same number governs bedding, where it matters even more.

Cutlery, briefly

Stainless steel is graded by the ratio of chromium to nickel. 18/10 has ten per cent nickel, which gives it a warmer lustre and better corrosion resistance. 18/0 has none, is magnetic, and will spot and dull. The difference in price is modest and the difference at twenty years is total.

Weight and balance matter more than pattern. Hold a knife by the handle and let it rest: if the blade drops, the balance is wrong and it will feel cheap forever, whatever it cost.

The count

Eight of everything, not twelve. Twelve is bought for a dinner that happens once and then stored, which means half of it is never used and all of it needs space. Eight covers every real dinner, fits a dishwasher in one load and can be extended by borrowing on the two occasions a year it is not enough.

And buy an open stock pattern, one that is still in production, so that breakages can be replaced. A discontinued set is a set that shrinks permanently, and it is the reason so many households end up with six plates that do not match.

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