My name is Eva Longoria and I am my deraon and welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores our past and present through food. On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages from our culture.
So make yourself at home, even brichel.
Let me tell you some This next episode is a very contentious point in our household because my husband and I fight about this all the time that if I buy one more dish, one more serving plate, one more set of dishes, my.
Husband's going to divorce me.
Like I am obset with dinnerware and cops and platters and serving spoons, and I love to collect them from.
All over the world.
And I go, I got this in China, and I got this in Morocco, and I got this cup and you know, a vintage store and Leone and Pari, you know, and I just I'm obsessed, obsessed dinnerware.
So I have a bit of an addiction. I am a whore. Do you get the whole set or do you get pieces? No guess? And now yeah, I mean yes and no, it depends.
I was in Budapest and that one of the most beautiful porcelain markets in the world, and so they make these beautiful tea sets. So that one I was like, I gotta get the set, and same thing and evil. So the city of Limoges is like known for porcelain. It's just so beautiful. I was like, I gotta get the set. I love champagne coops and usually vintage ones.
There's one at a flea market, and so I have a big collection of like these mismatched champagne coops and somewhere are tiny, like they used to drink very They must have been smaller humans back then, because like in the Great Gatsby era, they're just like have these.
Beautiful designs on the outside.
I collect a lot of coffee cups, you know, and again usually they're tiny because back then we didn't have the mugs, right, it was different, much much different.
Do you do you collect dinnerware?
I do love dinnerware. I do, I do love. I definitely don't collect like you do. Yeah, like at all, but only because I think my husband would divorce me. He'd be like, it's either me or the dinner. But my dad had an obsession with dinnerware, and so my mom has like so much, and my parents used to entertain all the time when I was growing up. It is there is just something very beautiful about it. How did you start? How did how did this obsession start?
That's a good question.
I don't know, but I but you know, my aunt was a caterer and so I had to work.
For her company sometimes.
And so just like the way she presented food on a table, mostly because you know, she was paid to make it really beautiful, beautiful, that just stuck with me, Like your table setting should be telling a story. And I think the story of a plate is so powerful where it came from the history of Like if you think of talavea from Mexico and you think of like it's porcelain from China to France to Budapest. You know, it's just I don't know. A plate isn't just serving food,
it's serving a story. It's such a good conversation starter. When people sit down they go, oh my god, this is beautiful, and I go, oh my god, let me tell you where I got it.
Let me tell you. Yeah.
It's like an entryway into a cultural story, you know. And it's funny because it's not just functional. When people have their own plate. It's this personal boundary. It's like this is mine and that one's yours. So there's a history of like how it redefined hygiene and etiquette and identity.
And the rise of the individual. Yes, the rise of the individual.
You know, we talked about this in a previous episode of like Louis the fourteenth having such an impact on coursing out and stop having a buffet and everything at once and eating with your hands. Like there's now there's cutlery, and now there's classic culture, and so for me, all of it is so fascinating, but just the patterns and how things are made, and anytime there's like a new discovery of like whether somebody found a mummy, and I'm like, is there a cup in there?
Like I want to see it. I want to see did they put any dishes in there?
Yeah?
In there. There was an exhibit at.
The Getty or here at Latin, I can't remember, but like, you know, everybody's looking at all this art and I'm just searching for like where's the pottery, where's the dish? What did they eat out of? What did they cook out of? I'm always I'm always drawn to that more than the painting.
I love you know, all of it. But I agree when there's like or even like shards of pottery, it's like, oh what was and then what was in the mummy stomachs? Like what were they eating? What was served on this?
Like that stuff. I just love the stories.
Behind it and and like everything, right, like what we do with this podcast.
It's all about food and storytelling.
But we haven't really talked about the plates, the dishes, the cutlaw water.
I know, but what like what came first, the plate or the bowl? That's like a question. I would have to think it was the bowl, right, It was definitely the bowl. Oh god ding ding.
I would think of the bowl just because it was like a probably an evolution of a cup, right that like held water Like that was really our sustenance was like to be able to drink water.
Yeah, and these are things like the plate is so ordinary, right, we don't really think about it, but it.
Didn't even knew all the time.
Yeah, me too, And this is why this is why we do this, because this is the stuff that keeps us up at night.
Well, what came first?
The plate of the bowl, this is what keeps us up at.
So but for thousands of years people ate from shared bowls, right, so it's really different. Bolts are ancient, they're communal, they hold liquids and grains and then and then plates evolved later from surfaces like bread or wood into symbols of individual status and food separation. Right, So, going way, way way back to the prehistoric era, like before ten thousand BC, people use shells or gourds.
Or my birthday this year, I'm doing the Camino the Santiago.
Oh wow, the s pinhole of that pilgrimage to the church is a big scallop shell. Yeah, so that's all that they would take is this clamshell to drink water on the way.
That's so cool that you're doing that. That's I've been one to do that forever.
That's like, and you're going to you take this along the way and that's where you're going to be drinking from.
Yeah, you take it. You take your own.
You know, they seldom now, it's very it's very touristy. But you clip it onto your backpack and you just have the shell.
And then they have places all along the Camino for you to get water and you drink from your shell. That's so beautiful. That's so beautiful. Right now I'm doing the baby one.
I'm not doing like the thirty day, eight thousand kilometer one.
I'm doing like the five days. Might do the three day.
That's steps in and just being part of this pilgrimage, being part of something that's so much bigger than you, that people have done for so many years.
And that's just that's simple of that Camino. Is this boble the shell? Yeah, bowl shell up?
Yeah, yeah, this this yeah, exactly the bullshell, that's the same thing. But this idea, you know, we're this idea of the ceramic bowl. We see in places like China, like the earliest ceramic bowls not just the shell or the gourd seed in Japan and China and the Czech Republic to serve foods that were boiled, not baked, and stews, you know, dominated the diet. So this idea, when we start seeing first ceramic bulls, it's when people started settling down.
So when we look at early pottery, we see the story of humans settling and then having ceramic vessels meant that people were staying put and they were storing food and they were also boiling and making stews, and they were transforming grains and legomes in different ways, right in a way that roasting and you know, putting it on a fire just sort of couldn't do. And so you were talking about when you were describing your beautiful coop glasses that are just so beautiful. Some of this early
ceramics is decorative. So early on especially there's this really interesting like Japanese ceramics called Jomu ceramics, is that it's ornate, like they would take ropes and press onto the clay. So from early on there's this idea of function but also of aesthetics.
So wait before we get started, because I know, I feel like I always get confused with like what came purst the chicken or the egg, what came first? Pottery versus porcelain versus stone, you know, stoneware, So what are the like I guess what came first?
And how you make dinnerware?
So the early so the big picture is like you know, pottery, when we're talking about all of these things, the umbrella different the umbrella, but there's different types. So the different types of clays depending on what is available. So the main three types are earthenware stoneware and porcelain, and they're very different. So earthenware is fired at a low temperature. So this is when we think of our like clay like like our like like a barrel.
Right, it's it's fired at.
A low temperature, and low is still pretty hot, like seventeen hundred to twenty one hundred degrees fahrenheit.
So puce it's fired out, still not baking. That's low. You're noting, No, no, you're not. You're not baking it out.
That's low. So because it's low. For clay, that's low, it's a little bit porous, and it needs to be glazed in order to hold liquids. And so this is more of like bar it's kind of like an earth tone. And then we have stoneware that's higher, that's fired at a higher temperature between twenty one ninety and twenty three eighty degrees fahrenheit. And this is dense and super hard
and much more durable. It's it doesn't it holds liquids without holding, without needing a glaze, and it's much more resistant. And this we see for mogs, for baking dishes, for dinnerware. It's solid, it's kind of it's called stoneware because it's solid like a like stone almost, and porcelain is even though porcelain is translucent and it's beautiful and it's white and it's thin, it's the most durable of all of it.
This is fired super hot, you know, twenty three eighty one to two hundred and twenty four to fifty five degrees fahrenheit. It's super hard, it's super dense, it's non porous, it's white, it's smooth, it's so thin, it's almost translucent. Sometimes it looks like paper thing, like it's so delicate, but it's super strong.
Seems it seems like it would be the most delicate one, but it's not.
It's the strongest one. It's the strongest one.
And this is like fine China tea sets like decorage, Like.
Why do we call it China? Are we going to call it China?
Because porcelain came from China, originally came from China, So this is why now we call it, you know, China.
But I will say, will people wonder why the porcelain, you know, pottery is the most expensive, And it's because it's harder to work with.
I was amply my travels in Limo.
You know, I'm obsessed with Limoje because they have the best person in the world and there's this brand that I love, been a dog. They just have such a beautiful They've been around since like eighteen sixty three and it's just this Le Meisson de ben adult and so it's actually no since seventeen sixty eight. And this woman discovered this like malleable type of white clay.
She just discovered this.
Malleable type of white clay and she decided to use it to get grease spots from her household linens. And then people realize like, oh, you know, it's actually this ingredient that Chinese have been using for centuries that make porcelain. And so the saga of Limoges porcelain like began and in like seventeen seventies.
And we have a whole section of porcelain coming up. I'm obsessed with I'm obsessed with it.
And then we're going to Lyon in June for searching for France, and I'm like, I'm going to buy an entire set of this. They have Louis the four, they have all the replicas of like this is what Louis.
This is the patterns from Louis the fourteenth. This was the pattern that was served in seventeen eighty.
Like they have all the rep they really make them, but like you could get the same pattern that they.
Used to use.
Those are the categories earthen stoneware, earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain.
Those are the three things.
But I guess let's start at the beginning, because early pottery tells us so much about settlement, about migration, about cooking. I mean, all the archaeologists have uncovered so many things about human evolution because of pottery discoveries totally.
I mean, we could trace when people went from being hunter gatherers to being in agricultural societies because they were sitting down, they were cooking, they were boiling, there were eating and this is and they needed plates to cut meat on because it's much easier to do on a
flat service and a rounded one. So even just from those those shards of plates that we see in museums, it really tells us so much about civilization and going back to ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, China in this valley, like dinnerware played roles and rituals and festivals and funerary offerings. Ancient Egyptians placed plates in their tombs. We see the same thing in Mesoamerica. Mayan vessels for hot chocolate have been found in funerary contexts and plates to hold them.
A list like this is you know, the fact that a plate could magically serve food forever in the afterlife is something so profound I can.
Do with the other what those as well?
We kind of push, Yeah, that's true, an alter assuming our ancestors will be fed their favorite things like we put it in dinnerware.
Yeah, that's true. It's the same thing. It's just the modern version of it. And it's just it's so beautiful. And I think this idea of the shift from utilitarian two decorative. And even though some early pottery, like the Jaman pottery in Japan, is really that some of the oldest pottery is really kind of decorative, like they would press rope on the clay to just make these interesting
surface areas. It wasn't until the ancient Greeks between the seventh and fourth centuries BC that they started introducing this red figure and black figure pottery and this sort of revolutionized ceramic. They made plates and bulls and drinking cups, and they adorned them with stories. So it was just this story like utilitarian storytelling. They would have scenes from mythology, from daily life and just like you know, heroic epics,
and so they were tools for artistic expression. And we actually see the names of the artists and you know, just drawn onto these plates. And some of them are so interesting. There are some Greek plates. I don't know if you've seen these. Spaghetty Villa here in Los Angeles has them, that met in New York has them as well. But there are these plates that have fish painted on it, and they have this little indentation in the center, so they held fish and then the little indentation held some.
Sort of sauce. So they were beautiful, but they were functional.
They told a story and so you could take your fish and dip it into the sauce.
They their Greek. Those are Greek.
And then the Romans made another shift because they started mass producing plates by using molds.
So it was the beginning.
Of the shift towards this democratization of dinnerware that foreshadowed the industrialisions by by like a really really long time. So they were doing glass, also making silver bowls and plates, and the silver is interesting because they had stamped.
They had the weight.
Of the silver stamp onto the stamped onto the vessel. This is like make and sometimes also with the maker's mark. So this idea of oh, yeah, this is my silver plate and it has the weight on it.
Right. Silver and gold obviously was used in dinnerware as well, but that's not technically pottery, right.
That's not technically pottery, no, but it also shows you know, there's just that there were different types depending on the on the on the status, right, and the gold ones were used more ceremonial.
Silver was more the ones that the that the elite would would eat.
Right, and elite households that had individual plates and cups. But for the most part in this time and in ancient Mesopotamia and Greece and Egypt, and they were still eating communally shared bolds.
Regular like most people, regular people, and I would assume in medieval Europe it was still this way.
Yes, Like when did the shift happen from this communal dining to individual place settings.
Yeah, it took it took a really really long time.
So medieval Europe people still didn't use individual plates. They would serve food on trenchers, which were like slices of bread that absorb sauces, or they would have shared bowls or you know, wooden boards, and then after the meal, the bread would be eaten or given away to the poor, and sort of dining was still communal, and it sort of started shifting between the thirdteenth and fourteenth century when we start seeing pewter. So there's still pottering among them,
but pewter among the wealthier classes. And pewter is an alloy of tin, and it could be molded into beautiful.
Shapes, but it had lead, I know, so it had health risks.
But still among the super wealthy, they were like, whatever, something's gonna kill me, right, So they were just they.
Were still it remained dominant material. They had short life spins. They did, they did, they did. But there was a shift porcelain fever. I still have porcelain fever.
So there was a big Europe went crazy for porcelain, but it was China that developed it, right.
China developed it, you know, beginning around the seventh eighth century, that during the Tang dynasty. But yeah, Europe went sort of completely cuckoo over over porcelain. So they developed it. They perfected it later between the fifteenth and eighteenth and seventeenth centuries, and we talked about porcelain was just so durable and so amazing. It started to it was the opposite of Europe's heavy ceramics or metals. And by the fifteenth and sixteenth century, no, it was across Europe. They
really just wan their hands on this porcelain. They competed all over Europe. They competed to get it, and it was transported along the Silk Road and later you know, by sea.
And it was.
The kalin, which is that what it's called, the clay, So the porcela is made of this refined clay called kalin. Is it native to some place or can kaylin be found anywhere?
It can't be found anywhere. But for a very very long time it was. It was only only China was making it right, and so European alchemists were like, what the hell is this?
Because it was.
So durable, it's translucent, it doesn't scratch, it's stunningly beautiful. So they were trying to replicate it like for many you know, for hundreds of years, they would mix eggshells and marble dust and mother of pearl and they would, you know, buried underground and it was like this whole they were trying to replicate this. They thought it was
just magical because it was just so beautiful. And then it wasn't until the early seventeenth century that Germany found kalin deposits in Germany, that's the first time that they found it. So that's paved the way for a porcelain manufacturer called Masin Porcelain. France followed at Vincennes and then sev and these were championed by people like Madame de Pompadour, and they were making a different type of porcelain, that soft paste porcelain, which doesn't have kalin, but it became
just legendary, the self porcelain. I'm obsessed with self porcelain because it's just it's so beautiful. It's like they have stories, they have little flowers and little cupid and then they're known for their like pinks and blues and greens, and it's just so beautiful gilding. It's just so elaborate. But they started making these coordinated dinner service a soup plate, a fish plate, a dessert plate, charger plates like each plate for a specific.
Course and this idea of owning.
A full service of porcelain was not just functional, It wasn't just about eating. It was this display of taste and refinement. So we start seeing this idea of taste go hand in hand with the beautiful table, right, So.
Then you know I'm obsessed with limoj So then France finally discovered Kaylin Depause's near Limoje in seventeen sixty eight.
Many of my.
Favorite mason the porcelains are are in Limos, and I didn't know they had found the clay.
I thought, like, they've just shipped in clay and they just made it better.
This is why now Limos is so known for it, because this clay is a little it's a little different.
So yet once they founded at Limoje, this was a rival to imported Chinese porcelain, right, it just changed everything. They also founded in England, so there's a Chelsea porcelain. So but that's pretty much it's Germany, England and France. I believe those are the only countries in European.
Yeah. Yeah, and the US has summit in Georgia.
But you know, yes, the US has some Klan, a major belt of high quality Kailin is found along the Fall line in like Middle Georgia in the United States.
That's fascinating.
Yes, that is crazy Kailin.
It comes from the Chinese gauling, which means a high ridge. I don't know, so I guess that's like what created this place, like it was a high something Kaylin Helen. But anyway, I'm obsessed with Limos. Everybody in France knows. They make fun of me because Limoj only has porcelain industry.
But it's interesting because they made this discovery in France about in seventeen, you know, sixties, which was like French Revolution was happening, Napoleon and it was also this the the idea of the curated dining experience in Louis the fourteenth and you know, this opulence and status and all of this, you know, was happening at the same time
the revolution was happening. And it's just interesting that, you know, something as simple as dinnerware could reflect that history, like yeah, trying, but well porcelain, you know, having a nice set of ports dinnerware just projected this imperial power and it said so.
Much about the politics at that time. Was so interesting.
Yeah, and you know during the and the way that people like sav porcelain, it was really so beautiful and ornat and little cupids and little flowers. And then after the Revolution it became these neoclassical designs and Roman motifs and just these vases and it was about politics, so they shifted their aesthetics to shift with the time. This is what's so fascinating when talking about food and things like a plate or a fork, is that you just trace it and it tells you the history of just
the world. I mean, it's just really it's just blows my mind every single time. But let's talk about how this porcelain fever was reflected in colonial Mexico then New Spain, which is really quite interesting because the porcelain crape in colonial Mexico was very different. There's no porcelain in Mexico.
There's not porcelain in Mexico. There's not Marlona in Mexico. Yeah, there is no, but there's beautiful is it earthenware or there's yes, it's different.
Porcelain was coming in on the Manila galleons, right, and there were exchanging things like porcelain for silver from the Americas. So it was coming in and the wealthy, you know Urbans and the colon the Spaniards, they had porcelain from China. This porcelain, Chinese porcelain appeared on tables and sometimes they would use these tea sets or coffee sets to drink
hot chocolate. But they also displayed them in cabinets. I want to get to that next is like what about the cabinets or where did that come from?
So this imported porcelain, they were the good times. Don't threaten me with an all war.
So but this popularity of imported porcelain influenced local ceramics. So in places like Buevla, potters developed a lavera, which is a tin glazed pottery inspired by blue and white porcelain. So it combined the blue and white Asian aesthetic with Spanish traditions like Talavea pottery, which is very similar to the to the Mexican taala vera. But also the Dutch had the Delft pottery that was blue and white. But these are much cruder, of like stunningly beautiful, but but but but thicker and.
Just just a little more just a little a little.
Cruder, but but but it's the ballaveta, the Mexican talaveda. It blends this Asian traditions with the Spanish tradition with indigenous Mexican techniques. So you see this very distinctly Mexican style of.
Art that is emerging. That that emerges, and it was mostly like red and orange clay, right, the talareta is blue and white. Was it in Puebla that it became.
A Puebla That's when it became That's where they developed it in Buebla.
I guess because now everybody has beautiful plates. They're not fine China, but.
Everybody has you know, your your what is it restoration hardware, your pottery barn.
Your target. I have the most beautiful dishes from Target.
Like when did it be mass produced and kind of moved away from like this elite high society, almost royal, monarchical, exclusive thing to have nice plates to kind of mass produced stylish and durable, but like mass produce.
The Industrial Revolution, you know, of course, was during the in industri religion. There were factories like Wedgwood in England. Josiah Wedgwood. He was an ardent abolitionist. He pioneered techniques that made really stylish durable dinnerware to a growing middle class. And he was able to standardize shapes, refined glazes, and he was able to produce ceramics at scale and at
a low cost. And these were still beautiful, These were still refined, and he had these matching sets, and so he was able to you know, anybody could could have this. And we also start seeing around this time this idea of formal china versus everyday dishes, and this was sort of rey and first this Victorian etiquette, which emphasized hospitality and refinement. So we start seeing because it's more affordable, we start seeing the concept of separate dishes in middle
class households. So the industry revolution really changed everything. And also around this time, the eighteenth and nineteenth century, we start seeing the china cabinet, the buffets.
The fun Yes, that's dying. I came there, man, that was it.
Let me tell you something though, I remember growing up and the first time we got a china cabinet, it was a big deal.
To have that piece of furniture in.
The dining well, our dining room slash living room thing. It was just I remember, it was my mother's pride and joy.
Wow. Yeah, it was crazy. Wow. Wow. Yeah.
We start seeing them around the eighteenth nineteenth centuries, and it was you know, it provided this area, this this yeah, this place for you know, for showing your beautiful china. Sometimes it had a mirrored back. And during the Victorian era they became taller, they became much more ornate.
They had glass.
Doors that you could see it it's reflected in the mirrors in the back. And this was really sort of quite different. It took kind of this idea of dining as a spectacle to another level. Now it has they're usually in the dining room, right, we didn't have one growing up.
I mean, like it was a big deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah they are.
I mean they're really they're so beautiful that prior to this, you people would have a sideboard, and but most of the time people would just put them away, like put them in you know, on in cabinets or you know, on shelves, and they weren't necessarily part of the esthetics.
Of the of the home.
And so yeah, so's so I think that in the twentieth century, sort of mid century, we start seeing these sideboards. They became really popular, and they're not as as ornate as they once were, but there's they still They're still in homes. You still see these kind of homes.
I think now mid century modernism, you know changed. Now we have you know a lot of lightweight, shatterproof plastic plates, so you don't really want to display that. Or we have functional stuff right like heat proof glass and pyres and and that's not as pretty or metal bowls, right, and.
So none of that is for display.
So I feel like the china cabinet and the sideboard and all of this was like about aesthetics and then it kind of moved into convenience and functionality simplicity. You know, we talked about you know, the kitchen. When did we talk about that. I moved from like yeah, the stove, oven, the oven, the oven, yeah, aesthetic to being functioned on.
Now it's stainless steel and restaurant quality. Put the griddle, Put the griddle in the middle.
Like it's just like now I think, now it's a choice in your house. Like we have so much diversity in materials today, So your dinner where could reflect your culture, it could reflect efficiency, it could reflect aesthetics.
So I think it's it's.
Interesting the amount of choices we have so fire King is a line of dinnerware that was like heat resistant glassware. It was made by this guy Anchor Hawking, like in the nineteen forties to the nineteen seventies, but it was made to rival pirates, which is interesting that Pyrex is still around and was around. But it was designed for like durability that so it could withstand to put in the oven and and so like I said, my coffee cup, you could put the coffee.
Cup and the mug in the oven.
And he marketed it as stylish and like even today, I'm like, it's known for that jade green color. And then he did like an orange gold color. I have both, but it was just like, ugh, it's so reminiscent of the nineteen fifties housewife and ads and in you know that moment that was such a moment because it was like this is durable but pretty, and so now you have to collect it if you want to buy it.
Because they didn't, I guess they went out of business. I don't think they're still around.
Yeah, through the nineteen seventies. Yeah, from the forties to the seventies.
And so we did.
Then there was another shift because okay, we went from like beautiful to I mean elegant, to you know, industrial to plastic to the imperfect bowl. The it's perfect like the like I made this myself in a pottery class. So there's a shift also to this like imperfection in pottery is there's a brand that does with right.
There's a brand that I'm obsessed with called Heat Ceramics, and they've been around. It was founded by a woman named Edith Heath in Sasolito, California, in nineteen forty eight.
And this was sort.
Of this new idea of luxury. So it's not the fine refined ceramics. It's not your you know, beautiful but functional glass or and it's not your plastic or anything like that.
But it's so it's this stoneware.
It's this really really beautiful stoneware and really Matt glazes, and every piece just has small imperfections.
I'm obsessed with it.
These this idea of the imperfections are flaws, but they really show the hand, the care of the artists, the care of each piece. So they're beautiful, they're functional, they're stackable. Friend of mine gave me this like huge blue bowl as a wedding gift, and I was.
Like, what is this most beenible thing I've ever seen?
And now I'm obsessed with it. But it really stood apart from mass produced dinnerware in you know, the nineteen forties and because it focused on local production and it's still around. If you're in Los Angeles, there's a store on Beverly Boulevard and it's just oh, it's so beautiful and it's like it's colorful, and I just I love the blues and the yellows and that and the.
Like just the white is like so white.
So it's just, yeah, I'm obsessed with them. There's so much beauty in this world, so much.
Beauty on a plate. Beauty on a plate.
Like you think about the food on the plate, and you want to make that beautiful, but like we forget about the plate. Can we talk a little bit about disposable plates, which I have to tell you I use I have, I have, you know, eco friendly paper plates.
Pippe hates it. Pippe is like I sometimes I give them like a bean.
Thuckle in the morning and I put it on a paper plate because I'm like, don't want to watch dishes. We gotta go like hurry up and eat your I'll go and he just looks at me as if he's.
Like, why are you giving me a paper plate? Hey? He's like this is so uncivilized. Yes, that's how I am too. I mean, Dave, my husband is like, what are you Queen Victoria? Like what yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was like no, yes, yes, I am.
It's just I understand the human Yeah, He's.
Like, you can give the paper plates to the kids, but like you're not giving it to me, you know. And I'm like, okay, fine, I don't use them a lot. But when did that come around? Like when did this like single use item come into play?
Well, I mean there's this man named Martin Keyes and he's credited with developing the first molded paper plates out of wood pump. But when we think about it, if we go way way back, like people were eating out of leaves. So there's this this precursor of paper plates in some way has been around for a long time.
But he developed this paper plate in nineteen oh four and he was working in he was a mill worker, and he saw his fellow his colleagues or his whatever fellow mill workers used then scraps of wood as makeship plates, and he was like, oh, that's interesting, So he founded the Keys Fiber Company in Maine. He manded a machine to make plates out of wood pulp and they were called saved A Plates and cups followed, and the company eventually by the nineteen thirties produced the Chinette brand China.
It's a nod to China and.
It's like a pretty sturdy white paper plate. So it's like, oh my gosh, this is like this nod to Chinese porcelain. But you know, Americans throw away an estimated trillion disposable plates and utensils a year. So I always think of like archaeologists are going to look back at our time, at our culture as one built around disposability and speed.
Wait, I guess as the plate, is the individualized plate a universal thing or their cultures that don't do the individual plate.
It's a very Western thing, right, because the Western is not universal. It's not universal, So we think of like Western plating reflected the idea about of the self. Many cultures traditionally eat from share dishes, right, so it's really
quite different in the West. Each diner receives their own portion and their own plate, and so in other places of the world, for example, an Ethiopia and Erytrea, meat meals are often served on a large tray and the food like various different types of stews are placed on top of injera, which is this like spongy bread, and diners eat together from the same plate, so there are terror pieces of this bread and scoop up the food.
So we see that in Ethiopia, in.
The Middle East, there are mets there are placed in the center of the table for.
Everybody to share.
You take small portions using spoons, you know, rather than individual plates. India as well, like family size, family style meals are common lots of things, and I love the family style eating.
It's my favorite way to eat.
But everything in the middle and then people just serve themselves whatever they want. So this communal eating right. China as well, we see plates in the center, often on like a rotating lazy susan, and then diners they take their food into small bowls. So you know, it's different. In every culture has something completely different. But before we say goodbye, I want to go back to the bowl. The kind of become dominant because of fast casual restaurants, like people with layer sweet creams.
They're super popular.
Sometimes they refer to as slop bowls, which is so derogatory. But I kind of think that food tastes better in a bowl. I don't know, eat I eat pasta ina bowl. Yeah, I don't like pasta on a plate, but it is.
It does better in a bowl. Me too.
But there's like a grain bowl, like Saddi bulls. Everything is cut up, everything is sort of together. And I just feel like this idea of like a ball is something so intimate, you know, and especially now like thinking about all of this and going back to this idea of community, and there's something just very cozy about a bowl. But I love how dinnerware, you know, it's really throughout the ages.
It's a reflection of how we live, how we dine, and how we connect with one another.
I love I love I love dinnerware. I love the evolution of it, the history of it, and I'm going to continue hoarding it.
So I think you should. I thank you you guys.
Send us pictures of your favorite piece of dinnerware. Is it a favorite cup, Is it a favorite plate?
Is it a favorite serving spoon. I'd love to see it. We really would love to see this, We really would Yeah, we want to know what are you dining on? Yes? What are some brands we're not aware of? That I should all of a sudden become obsessed with.
That.
I need to collect gosh, I want to see your collection. Well, thank you guys for listening, and we'll see you next week. Bye. Everybody Hungry for History.
Is a Hyphene Media production in partnership with Iheart's Mikoura podcast network.
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