> You can barely give away china these days. We would get beautiful, perfect condition full sets of china, mark it down to like $30 for an entire 12-place set, and it would just sit there.
Chinaware sucks to actually use: it can't go in the dishwasher, it's smaller and less convenient than normal-sized dishes, and so on. Even if you want to spend lots of money on dishes, you're much better served buying nice stoneware at Crate and Barrel or something, it looks as good or better and is actually useful. Chinaware generally just sits there and takes up space; I wouldn't take any even if it was free.
And the thing is, it's not really a tragedy that nobody bothers with chinaware anymore. Chinaware was only ever a "keeping up with the Joneses" status-signalling purchase to show you'd made it as a middle-class household, and it's been replaced by other goods for that purpose. We're not losing out on some kind of heritage tradition here, it's just one set of shallow luxury goods getting replaced with another.
We got china for our wedding and at some point we just decided to use it regularly like our other dishes. So far it’s been more durable than our crate and barrel stuff that we also got for our wedding, and we put it in the dishwasher too!
That said we also have some china that’s been in my wife’s family for generations and we’re afraid to put that in the dishwasher. That effectively makes it decorative in our case.
Chinaware sucks to actually use: it can't go in the dishwasher, it's smaller and less convenient than normal-sized dishes, and so on. Even if you want to spend lots of money on dishes, you're much better served buying nice stoneware at Crate and Barrel or something, it looks as good or better and is actually useful. Chinaware generally just sits there and takes up space; I wouldn't take any even if it was free.
And the thing is, it's not really a tragedy that nobody bothers with chinaware anymore. Chinaware was only ever a "keeping up with the Joneses" status-signalling purchase to show you'd made it as a middle-class household, and it's been replaced by other goods for that purpose. We're not losing out on some kind of heritage tradition here, it's just one set of shallow luxury goods getting replaced with another.