Setting a Herend Table: Place Settings and Sizes
Written by Tamar Medzadourian, Paris Tableware, Ridgewood, New Jersey. Updated .
A five-piece Herend place setting, as American stores count it, is a dinner plate, a salad plate, a bread and butter plate, a tea cup and its saucer. Herend sells each of those pieces separately, on shapes shared by the classic patterns, so settings can be built in one pattern or mixed. Most households settle on eight or twelve settings; the table below shows what each choice adds up to.
Every Herend place-setting piece, with sizes
| Piece | Shape | Size | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Service plate | 01527 | 11 in | Under the dinner plate for formal meals; nobody eats from it |
| Dinner plate | 01524 | 10.5 in | Center of the place |
| Rim soup | 01503 | 9.5 in | On the dinner plate for a soup course |
| Dessert plate | 01520 | 8.25 in | Brought in with dessert |
| Salad plate | 01518 | 7.5 in | On the dinner plate for a first course, or at the left |
| Bread and butter plate | 01515 | 6 in | Above the forks, at the upper left |
| Tea cup and saucer | 00734 | Saucer 6 in | At the right, or served with dessert |
Sizes are from the Rothschild Bird and Golden Edge product pages at Paris Tableware. The same shape numbers appear in Queen Victoria, Princess Victoria and Chinese Bouquet, though Princess Victoria's soup plates use other shapes.
One detail surprises people: the Herend dessert plate, at 8.25 inches, is larger than the 7.5-inch salad plate. If you want one small plate to do double duty, the dessert plate is the more useful size.
Five pieces in the US, three in Herend's own sets
US stores count five pieces per setting, as above. The manufactory sees it another way. Its set selector builds a dinner set per person from a flat plate, a soup plate and a dessert plate, and handles tea and coffee as separate sets. Its ready-made Apponyi dinner service for six follows the same plan: six dinner plates, six soup plates and six dessert plates, plus a tureen, platters, bowls, a sauce boat and a salt cellar. When a seller quotes a price per setting, ask which pieces it includes.
How many place settings to buy
| Settings | Good for | Pieces (five per setting) |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | A first pattern, a small apartment, or a test before committing | 20 |
| 8 | Dinner parties around one table | 40 |
| 12 | Holidays with the whole family; with Rothschild Bird, one setting per motif | 60 |
China gets broken over the years, so a setting or two beyond the chairs you own keeps the service complete. Count your largest regular gathering, then round up.
Building a service over time
- Start with the everyday pieces: dinner plates, salad plates and cups, in the pattern or in Golden Edge.
- Complete the five-piece settings: add bread and butter plates and saucers.
- Add the serving pieces that work hardest: a platter, a round serving bowl, a creamer and a covered sugar.
- Finish with the occasional pieces: rim soups, dessert plates and service plates.
Because Herend stays available piece by piece, the service never has a deadline, and a second pattern added later still lines up on the same shapes.
Laying a Herend place
Set the dinner plate at the center of each place, on its service plate if the meal is formal. For a first-course salad, put the salad plate on top of the dinner plate; when salad comes with the main course, set it to the left. The bread and butter plate goes above the forks. Cups and saucers usually come out with dessert. For flatware and glasses, Paris Tableware has a full guide on how to set a table.
Common questions
What is in a five-piece Herend place setting?
A dinner plate, a salad plate, a bread and butter plate, a tea cup and its saucer. Herend sells each of them separately.
Which is bigger, the Herend salad plate or the dessert plate?
The dessert plate. At Paris Tableware the Herend dessert plate is 8.25 inches across and the salad plate is 7.5 inches.
How many Herend place settings should I buy?
Eight settings suit regular dinner parties and twelve suit large holidays. Buying one or two more than your table seats keeps the service complete as pieces break over the years.
Does Paris Tableware sell Herend place settings as a boxed set?
No. Herend pieces are sold individually, so you can build settings in one pattern or mix patterns that share the same shapes.
Sources
We checked this page against the sources below on October 24, 2026. Piece counts, sizes and item numbers come from the Paris Tableware catalog on that date.