Les Fleurs Paper Party Plate

$9.00

Les Fleurs · Original Design · Paper Plates

The Les Fleurs paper plates place vintage botanical illustration against hand-marbled grounds in the tradition of the finest French decorated papers: deep crimson roses and open-faced blooms rendered with the careful draftsmanship of a 19th-century horticultural plate, set against the fluid, unrepeatable patterns of marbled paper in warm orange, magenta, and gold. The combination is not decorative in the ordinary sense. It is a collision of two serious 19th-century traditions, each demanding precision of a different kind, producing something that looks equally at home on a formal table and a garden lunch.

Available in 9” dinner and 7” salad or dessert sizes. Order both for a complete table setting in the Les Fleurs palette.

The Design

Botanical Illustration on Marbled Ground

The floral illustrations in the Les Fleurs collection are drawn from vintage botanical sources: the carefully observed, meticulously rendered rose studies produced for horticultural journals and scientific publications across the 19th century, at a moment when the documentation of plant species was considered work of genuine intellectual importance. These were not decorative illustrations. They were records, made by trained hands, of specific plants observed at close range over time.

The marbled grounds are drawn from the tradition of French papier maroquí and the decorated endpapers of the finest 19th-century bookbinders: hand-pulled patterns in which pigment floated on size produces the characteristic cellular, fluid forms that no two pulls replicate exactly. Together on a plate, the precision of the botanical and the controlled accident of the marbling produce a surface worth looking at between courses.

The Object

For the Table That Takes Its Setting Seriously

Printed on durable paper stock in full color, FDA compliant for food contact, and suited to dinners, lunches, appetizers, and salads. The 9” plate carries the full composition with the proportions of the original design intact; the 7” plate presents a tighter version of the same image, suited to a side setting or dessert course. Order the napkins from the same collection for a complete tableware set in the Les Fleurs palette.

Things Worth Knowing

Specifications

The Plates & Specifications

Sizes 9” Round (Dinner) · 7” Round (Salad & Dessert)
Material Durable Paper Stock
Print Full Color, True-to-Design on Full Face
Compliance FDA Compliant for Food Contact
Use Dinner, Lunch, Appetizers, Salads, Desserts
Design Vintage Botanical Illustration on Hand-Marbled Ground
Collection Vintage Voyagers France · Les Fleurs

A Note from Jeff

The marbled paper tradition and the botanical illustration tradition share something that is not immediately obvious: both require the practitioner to surrender a degree of control. The marblist cannot fully dictate where the pigment will go; the botanical illustrator cannot improve on what the plant actually looks like. What both produce, when the work is done well, is something that looks inevitable rather than designed. That quality is what I wanted on a party plate: something that looks as though it could not have been otherwise.

The Les Fleurs collection is the first in what will be an expanding range of original designs for the table. These plates are where it begins.