La Chinoiserie Noël Paper Party Plate (Set of 8)

The La Chinoiserie paper plates set a single garden scene in the chinoiserie manner — a blossoming branch in flower, a pheasant paused among the leaves, a low garden fence, and blossoms scattered as though caught mid-fall — here drawn in bright green against a deep lacquer red. It is the sort of pattern that reads as porcelain from across the room and as printed paper up close: an old European fascination with the gardens of the East, set on a table you can lay without ceremony.

The scene belongs to the long tradition of chinoiserie, the 18th-century European taste for Chinese-inspired ornament that filled drawing rooms with pagodas, pheasants, and flowering branches. Red and green arrive here by way of lacquer and leaf rather than by way of Christmas — the colours of a japanned cabinet and the garden painted across it — which is why the plate reads as Noël without ever announcing it. Set it out in December and it belongs to the season; leave it out in January and it is simply a red plate.

Green foliage and blossom carry across a deep red ground, the two colours close enough in weight that the drawing stays soft rather than graphic. Available in 9″ dinner and 7″ salad or dessert sizes, with a coordinating bowl. Eight plates.