Well, I have a set of pure white porcelain everyday dishes that I love using with jewel-tone napkins in different colors on a navy blue tablecloth.

I also have a motley assortment of colored stoneware plates and bowls that look great on my color-block tablecloth. With either the white or the colored dishes, I use an odd assortment of colored serving bowls and crystal serving bowls (whatever the food looks prettiest in!), salt and pepper shakers, etc. We like it very much.

And then I have my grandmother's elegant tri-color china service for 12 from the 1920s, with two of every serving piece you can imagine, square sandwich plates, tea cups AND coffee cups, soup tureens and salad bowls and more. It's an amazing set, and I've never used much of it except the standard dinner setting. I also have her silverware and her crystal wine, water, and sherbet goblets, all service for 12, and crystal pitchers. Oh, and the banquet cloth and napkins. I've never had a table big enough to use it, it's so huge! I'm kind of embarassed to use the china, it's so formal, but on the occasions I have everybody loved it.

So there you have it! I particularly like using the crystal things I've inherited from my grandparents on both sides. No matter what else is on the table, I love the sparkle of the crystal! I'm glad you asked!

Sherry

For all of us "sybarites", I have two looks.
When I'm playing ladies, I use my dainty set. It's white fluted bone china with voilet sprays around the edge, and I set it on a pale green damask cloth (second hand from Ebay), with fuscia and gold crystal glasses. Plain white napkins, and an arrangement of delicate fern leaves with plain white candles in the centre. It's all sparkly and delicate when it's set up. Oh, and Vivaldi's Four Seasons in the background LOL
But my usual and other look is totally the opposite. Woven bamboo placemats with chunky earth coloured striped pottery bowls, and hot orange napkins. Mpdern glasses with lime green palm leaves etched on the sides, and centrepiece is a black wood dish with big chunky candles set among an arrangement of chiles and/or hibiscus flowers (whatever one is out in the garden). Oh, and soft Calypso mood music in the background!

I love the pretty pretty formal look, but I'm simply more at home with ethnic/tropical/casual. One of my DIL's calls the cupboard where I keep the "pretty" things, the Old Auntie's Cupboard. She'll open up the other one where I keep the ethnic pottery sutff, and sigh and say, "This is the cupboard I want to inherit." My other DIL loves the pretty things, so they joke that I'll never have to worry about them fighting about who wants what when I'm dead. They already have it all worked out LOL.
I have a tea set of all mix and match cups and saucers that I use when I have "ladies" afternoon tea. All different flowers, that I mix up.

And yet, if DH and I want to celebrate something really special, just the two of us.... our most romantic and relaxing very very special favourite?
Fish and chips on paper plates in bed, with a good DVD. LOL

Oooh, I'll play. I love china and dishes, and I have tons. I inherited quite a bit, and used to prowl estate and yard sales, before Ebay took everything away.

But for festive occasions, and I believe in lots of those, I use my Derby Border plates and then mix and match the salad, bread and butter and dessert plates. I use my Royal Copenhagen Blue Fluted sometimes, or the Bing & Grundahl Christmas plates (when I was a teenager, my favorite aunt gave me one every year and I thought they were so boring!).

If I'm feeling in a red mood, I'll throw in (not literally) some Red Aves bits and pieces I've found at estate sales, etc. I figure if the colors all work together, then the patterns will too.

I swap out my everyday all the time. I've had Spode, Emile Henry, some pottery from Conrans, Waehrungsrechner, and some fake-Quimper from Anthropologie. When things get too chipped or I get tired of them, I either give them away or sell them at a yard sale, and look around for more. Life's too short for dull dishes.

My husband is a chef, and we've had over-sized restaurant white, but even he likes the variety.

I love to have the place settings match. But I like to have variety in the SERVING pieces. Colored glass is my current favorite.

I'd mix my two chinas, but the whites don't match, and it bothers me.

In furniture is where I really *hate* having stuff match. My MIL wanted me to register for a bedroom suite, bcs she wanted to buy that for us as a wedding present. I had to firmly explain that, not only did I already own Great Grandma Adams's "chester drawers," but I didn't WANT things that matched.

I like to do the mix-and-match I have one set of plain white dishes and one with a colorful pattern, with white, gold (not metallic), red, purple--sort of Tuscan, but not exactly. I also am a tablecloth junkie and hunt for ones that bring out the best in my patterned china, or that are just the right color for the adjacent den, or similar.

However, this area is a big source of potential clutter and non-simplicity for me. I drool over magazine photos of lovely table settings and think of how I might buy some red plates to mix with my white china for holidays, or isn't that a great idea for contrasting napkins that would go with my ____ tablecloth, and before you know it, I may have bought a new item, stuffed a new cloth in a drawer that's already full, or created too many choices.

So it's easy for me to get caught up in the lusting after some new element, or be trying to live a too-Martha Stewart life when I only had time to cook the dinner, not cook and noodle over a new table setting.

Sigh...

Oh, I can relate to all of you! I have clear dishes I've collected from thrift stores that I mix/match all the time. I like that the food shows up well, and it all goes together without looking too contrived. Whether the food is stored in an old refrigerator dish or on an elegant platter, it all looks good on the table as long as the food looks good enough to eat!

I also mix in my vintage Weller, McCoy and Van Briggle pottery pieces sometimes on the table. I acquired some clear glass plates with a goldfish (showing through), so a pond theme is sometimes my inspiration. The pottery pieces are lilies, cattails, frogs and a lotus pod flower frog. (The flower frog is great for holding skewers of food, and I've been known to put dip or salsa in the open bullfrog vase.)

My breakfast dishes (Denby) complement the Sago ironstone. My colored ramekins look good with some square colored salad plates, which I mix in with my vintage Orange Tree Homer Laughlin bowls. There's an inexpensive set of green glass plates, bowls, glasses that are fun to use during Easter/Christmas holidays. It's fun to mix it all up!