Dining rooms are looking back for their next presentation. Restaurants, hotels, cafes and bars are re-discovering the beauty of vintage serving pieces to add personality to their dishes. Whether that’s a scalloped rim, vintage floral embossments, patterns and colours that evoke emotions of a place, or mixed materials and shapes that create a one-of-a-kind tablescape for small plates and sharers.
Much of that comes down to how we are eating right now. Mediterranean food and its shared style of eating have taken hold across the industry, built around small plates rather than a single, centred main. That way of eating requires something different from the tabletop. Where a single large plate used to be the norm, an exciting mix of smaller dishes now calls for a variety in shapes, sizes, patterns, and materials, creating the kind of considered tablescape that vintage collections are suited to.
The idea behind this is that the beauty of a vintage collection lies in its uniqueness. Accumulating a set of pieces that add intrigue and character to a table is what turns a meal into an experience, especially in tabletop presentation. Anybody can go out and buy a white dinner set. There’s nothing wrong with that either, where some settings thrive on the simplicity and uniformity of the table display. But for those looking for something different, perhaps closer to what might be found in a family-run European restaurant with decades of history behind its crockery, curation is key.
That shift from mass bought to collected serves more than aesthetics. It signals effort and care. Diners want meals that feel like something more; they want emotion and experience. By presenting something unique, it connects with them on a deeper level, leading to customer retention and sharing amongst their social circles.
We eat with our eyes first, and the look of a dish can set taste buds alight before a bite is taken. Surface decoration, embossments, shape. They all play a part in the tabletop experience. Patterns suited to the dish being served, mixed and matched across eclectic pieces, build a tabletop the way European small plate service always has, the same instinct behind a table of tapas or meze, where no two vessels are quite the same. It’s the same feeling that drives the appeal of vintage: a setup that feels real because of its individuality.
Now, there’s a glaring issue with everything laid out here, and it’s that modern hospitality isn’t suited to old serving items. Most were made for the home, where plates were handwashed and used once daily. They had thinner, weaker bodies so chips and breakages occurred more easily. The shapes were not made to stack or go in a modern dishwasher. And decades of handling and washing cause the glaze to craze, developing fine cracks that let water into the body, weakening it over time and leaving gaps where bacteria can take hold. The character that draws diners in is exactly what makes true vintage unworkable at scale.
This is the gap that homages to vintage through commercial ranges are built to close: the curated feeling that these pieces give, but with the performance needed in hospitality.
Authentic Style. Modern Performance. Capri and Sorrento by ID Fine
Bridging the gap between authentic vintage style, small plate service, and hospitality performance, Capri and Sorrento by ID Fine add character to every table setting, giving the look and feel of a thoughtful tabletop.
Capri draws on the Amalfi coast, framing each piece in a bold leaf border in Mediterranean blues and greens, with select pieces carrying a vibrant blue flower motif at the centre. Sorrento leans into the citrus groves further along the coast, with a delicate lemon tree border and a crisp white centre throughout to frame dishes.
Both use digital printing to capture the crisp detail and subtle texture of a hand-painted finish, while scalloped and embossed rims add a further layer of texture. Available across a collection of scalloped plates, ovals, bowls and pizza plates that are at home either as hero dishes or woven into a spread of small sharing plates, built to mix and match with existing items.
Made from a commercial porcelain body, Capri and Sorrento are built for today’s hospitality venues. Dishwasher safe, these ranges are designed to perform through every service.