in april 2023, j.c. herman launched the six-piece potter's tableware series porcelaine royale.

Each piece is made by hand and with love and is sold per piece to the ceramic enthusiast.

porcelaine royale is a limited 'family' (each item represents 1 word from a letter), consisting of cups and saucers, breakfast and dinner plates, soup and serving bowls.





the series takes its name from a porcelain clay from england [↗].
this clay is as local as possible (the netherlands only has red or ocher clay) and produces, once it is used in our studio, no waste, because we recycle 100% of all clay and glaze residues and fire the result using solar or wind energy.

each item has a number at the bottom, that refers to a word from a letter from Father d'entrecolles.





This missionary sent that letter from china to France in 1712 and by doing so, he smuggled the (until then secret) recipe for porcelain to Europe.
this is one of the reasons that we can make this tableware and that you can buy it.

the letter gradually appears online: as soon as an item is fired, we take a photo of it and place the next word in this archive, also showing that photo and the date of production.





the design of porcelaine royale is neither from our hand nor is it not:

– the models are determined by the industry, which has been making hotelware [↗] since a bit over a century: stackable and neutral-looking tableware made of thick (impact-resistant) porcelain, which has been commercially produced, massively and mechanically, by various companies.

– the shaping of those models is done by us though, because we form each item much thinner and therefore lighter (both in weight and translucency) individually on the potter's wheel.
this requires extreme precision (so that cups can form a stack), but it is also inevitable that each product will have its own character, such as a crooked handle or egg-shaped diameter.

we do our best to make everything as uniform as possible, but clay shrinks during firing and human production wins from the machine in character, but not in precision: perfection is not known to us.





all our tableware is dishwasher- and food safe.

click here for sales addresses, or order online [↗].
click here and find your numbered item in the archive.