It is a rare delight when a piece of design history feels as radical today as it must have in its own time. The Famous Women dinner service, commissioned by Kenneth Clark in the early 1930s, is one such treasure. Created by Bloomsbury Group artists Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, the set of 50 plates celebrates women across centuries and continents—from Sappho and Jane Austen to Queen Victoria, Hollywood ingénues, and even the Queen of Sheba. Each plate bears Grant and Bell’s unmistakable painterly touch: splodges, squiggles, and a playful boldness that feels modern still.
What makes this commission striking is its context. Clark, so often associated with the conservative “great man” view of art history, entrusted two avant-garde artists to create a table service in which women—powerful, witty, intellectual, sensual—took centre stage. In doing so, he inadvertently anticipated Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party by decades, giving each woman her own symbolic seat at the table.
Now, the service has been meticulously recreated by Stoke-on-Trent pottery 1882 Ltd, priced at £12,000 for a full set. A fittingly audacious revival, this edition allows collectors to own a slice of Bloomsbury history.
Shown: Famous Women dinner service. More at charleston.org.uk.
My World of Interiors 