Decorative plates (from a comment)

[azurelunatic]

I think the entire concept of useless decorative plates is idiotic. Got an advertisement in the snail for some plate with a hideously ugly dog (one of the squashed-face variety) in with some poppies. For the love of gods, why?

My mother is a potter, and makes absolutely lovely dishes, which some people buy to display and never use. Other people buy them and use them every day. They're microwave and dishwasher safe, and have survived being dropped on a wooden floor by a five-year-old. If you're going to have a plate for display, it had better be beautiful; if you're going to have a plate in general, it had better be useful. Things that are neither beautiful nor useful really don't have much of a place in my mindset.

Comments

[amberite.livejournal.com]

My grandfather collected them. There were a couple of rooms with entire walls of them, in his house, before he died. (And he wasn't stupid, either -- he was a woodworker; he'd built the house. It's a nifty house. It has built-in laundry collecting chutes with pull-out drawers, and cabinets all over the place.)

I suppose it was like having lots of expensive round art prints. *shrugs* Could never see the point myself -- well, specifically in collector's dolls, made by the same people who make the plates: dolls are supposed to move! You're supposed to be able to give them personalities and tell stories with them! If they just sit there, you can still pretend they're paralyzed for life, but being paralyzed with a hand in the air holding a bubble wand is a little annoying . . .

[azurelunatic]

I suppose I'm some variety of purist, in that if an object is technically functional, it should be practically functional as well, and if an object is not functional, it should have beauty, or some other form of value, perhaps educational or sentimental.

If at all possible, objects that are functional should also be beautiful.

My father's Quaker aesthetic of beauty shows through, doesn't it.

Re:

[amberite.livejournal.com]

I agree that all objects should have some form of function or value, and that beauty is a form of value: but here's another one for you -- clearly, you don't really see any point in collector plates, and neither do I, but my grandfather did.

Insert thought-provoking question about subjectivity and the definition of beauty.

[azurelunatic]

File it under "People can be so weird sometimes" and try to focus on their good points.