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Songbirds perch in pairs across this Rothschild Bird platter. Herend, the legendary Hungarian house, is said to have named the pattern in the 1860s for its Rothschild patrons. Read its story.
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The Rothschilds were early patrons of Herend, and their name arrived with a legend. In the tale, a baroness of the family lost a strand of pearls in her Vienna garden and found it some days later, caught up in the play of birds in a tree. Here that necklace drapes across the painted branches, the emblem of the pattern's story.
The artistry lives in the painting. Birds of different species are worked by hand in soft pastel tones, while butterflies and insects scatter across the surface to give it movement and whimsy.
The shell-shaped scalloped rim is molded with white basketweave, a crisp texture that frames the painted garden, and 24k gold gilt trims its scallops. At sixteen and a half inches long, the oval offers a generous stage for a holiday turkey, or a handsome piece to keep on display between feasts.
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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