Antique Cabinet Plates between £0 and £0
A cabinet plate is a decorative porcelain plate made or set aside for display on a stand or in a china cabinet, many of them dessert-service plates whose broad painted wells were always meant to be looked at.
What They Are
Porcelain dominates, with a smaller run of ironstone and stone china and a few cloisonné and Satsuma pieces. Decoration is the whole point: hand-painted fruit, flowers, birds, landscapes and figure subjects, frequently on a coloured or gilded ground, and often carrying a decorator's signature as well as a factory mark.
The everyday piece is an English hand-painted plate sold singly from a named factory. Worcester in its several periods is far the largest strand, Royal Worcester most of all, followed by Derby, Minton and Coalport. The word 'dessert' runs through a sixth of titles, so 'dessert/cabinet' is a common cataloguing.
Four other groups turn up throughout. Georgian and Regency factory dessert plates make a substantial minority, with Flight, Barr & Barr, Bloor Derby, Spode, Samuel Alcock, H & R Daniel, New Hall, Chamberlain and Davenport among the names. Japanese and Chinese Imari and export plates account for about a tenth overall and a fifth of what is currently listed. Continental painted plates from Vienna, Meissen, Sèvres and Paris fill roughly a sixth. Ironstone and stone china pattern plates make a small, steady strand, often in sets.
Dating is loose. Around 103 of 266 listings carry a clean year, spanning 1800 to 1960, but the largest single bucket is a plain '19th Century', with 'Victorian' and 'Georgian' behind it. Titles often carry a tighter circa date than the dated field does, so the title is frequently the better guide.
Where The Range Splits
A painter's name does more than anything else. Fifteen titles say a plate is signed, and the highest-priced pieces name their decorator while the lowest name no painter at all and often no factory either, reading simply as an antique Victorian plate. An identified factory alone lifts a piece into the middle of the range.
Technique separates the top. Pâte-sur-pâte appears only four times in the whole sample, always Minton, always near the top. Pierced and reticulated borders, pearl-jewelled work, tooled gilt and rich coloured grounds sit well above transfer-printed and moulded basketweave plates.
Number counts too. Pairs run through about a eighth of titles, and sets of three, four, six, eight, ten and twelve appear regularly, sitting above equivalent singles. The large sets recorded include twelve Satsuma Meiji plates, twelve Royal Worcester game bird plates and an armorial Chamberlain set from the Carnatic Service at the very top.
Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for cabinet plates between £0 and £0, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
Cabinet plates have been listed on Sellingantiques since 2009.
Richard Sebright
The Antique Cabinet Plates between £0 and £0 Glossary
- Cabinet plate
- A plate made or kept for display rather than use, usually on a stand or in a cabinet.
- Dessert plate
- Originally part of a dessert service. Forty-three titles use the word, often paired as 'dessert/cabinet'.
- Ground
- The coloured background field behind the painting, in cobalt, pink, apple green, burgundy or orange.
- Signed
- Bearing the decorator's painted signature rather than the factory mark. Only one decorator's name is carried by three or more dealers on Sellingantiques.
- Imari
- The blue, iron-red and gilt palette, Japanese in origin and widely copied in England. It appears in twenty-two titles.
- Pâte-sur-pâte
- White slip built up in layers on a coloured ground to give a cameo effect. Every example in the sample is Minton.
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes a plate a cabinet plate?
It was made or set aside to be displayed rather than eaten from, on a stand or behind glass in a china cabinet. The habit grew with the porcelain factories of the 18th and 19th centuries and the Victorian and Edwardian taste for showing off painted china.
A large share began as dessert-service plates. Their broad flat wells suited elaborate painting, so they were catalogued later as cabinet plates.
Which factories appear most often?
Worcester in all its guises is the single most-named factory, appearing in a fifth of titles, with Royal Worcester the largest part of that and the early Flight, Barr & Barr partnerships accounting for around ten titles on their own.
Derby, Minton and Coalport follow. Continental names include Vienna, Sèvres, Meissen, Dresden, KPM, Chantilly and Paris porcelain.
Are they sold singly or in sets?
Singly, for the most part. That is the everyday piece: one hand-decorated plate from a named factory.
Pairs run through about an eighth of titles. Sets of three, four, six, seven, eight, ten and twelve do appear, including twelve Satsuma Meiji plates and ten Mason's ironstone plates.
How old are cabinet plates usually?
The dated field runs 1800 to 1960, and decade labels cluster in the 1900s, 1920s, 1910s, 1930s and 1880s. The 18th century appears only eight times.
Titles reach further at both ends than the dated field does, from a Sèvres soft-paste plate dated 1777 and a Chantilly plate of about 1755 through to painted fruit plates described as 1970s.
What does a signed plate mean?
It carries the decorator's painted signature, which is separate from the factory mark. Fifteen titles say a plate is signed, and artist names recur across Royal Worcester painted fruit and bird subjects.
Only one decorator's name is carried by three or more dealers, which shows how thinly artist attribution is spread across the trade. Elsewhere a painter may be given only as an attribution.
Do unusual shapes turn up?
They do, though rarely. Shell-shaped plates by H & R Daniel and a Japanese Imari one, hexagonal and octagonal Imari and Spode plates, and a square Cauldon plate with handles all appear in the sample.
The largest thing recorded is a 60cm Vienna charger.