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Roses of pink and yellow, each one sculpted, finish the twisted handles of Herend's Rothschild Bird vegetable dish. In 1851 the iconic Hungarian house of Herend received an order from Queen Victoria. Read its story.
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The queen placed it at London's Great Exhibition, and by one account the set was bound for Windsor Castle. Here the castle gives way to the garden, as butterflies and insects in soft pastels wander among the songbirds on this covered dish.
As one tale has it, a Baroness Rothschild mislaid a string of pearls in the garden she kept in Vienna until it surfaced in a tree days later, the birds' new toy. Rothschild Bird keeps that whimsy in its painting, its bird motifs varied from one to the next and every one hand-painted.
A dimensional lemon tops the lid; the roses are applied by hand against the green rope twist, every petal sculpted and attached on its own. Painter and sculptor share the work on this dish, its blossoms standing up from the porcelain as if newly grown. Carried to a holiday table, it brings that garden along.
Herend was born of patience. In 1826, in a quiet Hungarian town a short journey from Budapest, Vince Stingl opened a modest earthenware workshop with a craft he had learned in Vienna. Little by little, that workshop mastered porcelain, and with it a beauty fine enough to stop a queen.
And stop a queen it did. At London's Great Exhibition of 1851, Queen Victoria herself chose the house's gold medal-winning design for Windsor Castle, and Mor Fischer named it Victoria in her honor. Europe's great families followed. Herend named designs for the Esterházy, Batthyány, Rothschild and Apponyi houses who first bought them. Emperor Francis Joseph raised Fischer to the nobility in 1867, and the now legendary house became purveyor to the Habsburg dynasty.
That royal favor never left the house. By its own account, Herend is now the largest porcelain manufactory in the world. Yet its painters and gilders still finish their work by hand, for a house that belongs largely to the artisans who keep it. Its porcelain now graces homes in every corner of the world, prized most by collectors with a discerning eye. They know each piece carries the same craft that once won a queen's favor.
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