Antique Wedgwood Plates
Earthenware and pearlware plates made by Wedgwood for the dinner, dessert and cheese courses, and sold in pairs and sets far more often than singly.
Antique Wedgwood Plates
Wedgwood's Staffordshire pottery, founded in the 1750s, made refined earthenware table services for the middle and upper markets. Creamware and its whiter successor pearlware were the standard plate bodies from the later 18th century, and moulded majolica under thick coloured glazes became fashionable table and dessert ware from the mid-19th century.
Two bodies dominate the archive. Green majolica, moulded as leaves, cabbage, sunflowers or basketweave, is named in over a third of titles. Blue-and-white and printed pearlware and creamware make up the next largest group, including 'Water Lily'/'Darwin', Blue Palisade and a basketweave oval.
You are most likely to meet a set rather than a plate. Plural titles far outnumber singles, with sets of four, six, seven, eight, eleven and twelve all recorded. Shapes run from plain round to octagonal, quatrefoil and shaped oval outlines.
Dealer dates run from 1800 to 1950, Victorian being the largest group and Regency next. Three twelve-plate Bamboo-pattern services dated 1810-1815 cover cheese, dinner and dessert sizes. Drabware and lustre wares appear in a few listings, and one sampled set of armorial creamware is described as 1780-90.
Where Value Sits
Set size does most of the work. Single plates and pairs sit at the bottom of the sampled range, while sets of eleven and twelve, and a complete dessert service, sit at the upper end. A large run kept together is the thing that lifts a listing.
After that it is the body and the hand in the decoration. Moulded green majolica in leaf or cabbage form turns up throughout and forms the common middle. Hand-painted Edwardian work, gilt Aesthetic Movement octagonals, lustre-decorated drabware and armorial creamware all appear in the upper half.
Date and a name pull in the same direction. Regency Bamboo services and the 18th-century armorial creamware are among the highest-priced samples, and a plate with an identified pattern, Water Lily, Blue Palisade, sunflower, cabbage leaf, reads above a generic green plate. 'Rare' in a title flags the same end of the range.
Antique Wedgwood Plates Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for wedgwood plates, 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.
Three twelve-plate Bamboo-pattern services dated 1810-1815 have passed through Sellingantiques, in cheese, dinner and dessert sizes.
The Antique Wedgwood Plates Glossary
- Majolica
- Moulded earthenware under thick coloured glazes, in this category almost always green.
- Pearlware
- A bluish-white earthenware body used for printed and painted plates from the late 18th century.
- Creamware
- The cream-coloured earthenware body that preceded pearlware; one armorial dinner set is recorded.
- Dessert plate
- The smaller plate of a service, named as such in several of the sets. Cheese plates are a further size, recorded once in a set of twelve.
- Drabware
- A greyish-buff stoneware body, appearing both plain and with lustre decoration.
- Quatrefoil
- A four-lobed plate outline, recorded once, alongside occasional octagonal and oval shapes.
Antique Wedgwood Plates: Frequently Asked Questions
Are Wedgwood plates usually sold in sets?
Yes. Titles using the plural greatly outnumber singles on Sellingantiques, and sampled sets run to eleven and twelve pieces.
Sets of four, six, seven and eight are all present too. Singles and pairs occur, and they sit at the lower end of the sampled range.
What decoration turns up most often?
Green majolica, named in over a third of all titles. The mouldings recorded are leaf, cabbage leaf or cabbageware, sunflower and coloured basketweave.
Blue-and-white and printed pearlware and creamware make up the next largest group, including named patterns such as Water Lily, also listed as Darwin, and Blue Palisade.
How old are the plates listed?
The dealer-entered dates span 1800 to 1950. Victorian is the largest bucket, then Regency, then the 1870s.
Some listings carry only '19th Century' or '1800s', which cannot be read as precise. One sampled set of armorial creamware dinner plates is described as 1780-90, the earliest thing recorded.
What is the Bamboo pattern?
A Regency pattern that appears in three separate twelve-plate services dated 1810-1815, covering the cheese, dinner and dessert sizes.
This is the only place in the category where one service is split by plate size across separate listings.
Is 20th-century Wedgwood represented?
Thinly, but it is there: one listing each for the 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s and 1950s.
Those include Queen's Ware designer plates from 1950, lustre plates from 1910, and a set of seven drab ware plates with lustre decoration from the 1920s.
Do the plates come in shapes other than round?
Round dominates, but non-round outlines turn up occasionally. An octagonal porcelain plate appears twice, a quatrefoil pearlware plate once and an oval basketweave plate once.
Titles tend to flag those outlines, since a named shape lifts a listing above a plain one.