Antique plates are easily one of collectors’ most favorite vintage kitchen items. The proof? Many rare handpainted plates have sold for insane prices, reaching hundreds to thousands in auctions.
In this guide, I have listed down the 12 most valuable handpainted plates that you can find in your china cabinets, garage sales, and flea markets. You will also get expert tips to identify authentic hand-painted plates in the end!
12 Most Valuable Handpainted Plates to Collect!
While most vintage plates are highly collectible kitchenware items, certain hand-painted plates stand out for their exceptional rarity, artistry, and association with renowned makers and artists.
From collective porcelain to ceramic plates, below are 15 rare hand-painted plates that have sold for insane prices!
1. Meissen Handpainted Pastoral Scenes Plates
Meissen’s antique hand-painted plates are highly collectible today. This is an example of its hand-painted pastoral theme plates, which feature delicate and intricate pastoral scenes including trees, rivers, ponds, etc.
It’s a set of four plates and one platter, all with different paintings, all handmade. The plates have Meissen’s distinctive “sword” marking at the bottom. In excellent quality, these plates can fetch $1,000-$3,000 per plate and $5,000-$10,000 per set.
2. Picasso Madoura Ceramic Plate
Madoura Pottery studio in Vallauris, France, released a limited edition of dishes, designed by the famous Spanish artist Pablo Picasso in the mid-20th century. These dishes are highly collectible today.
This one is an earthenware plate featuring a bull with leaves on a burnt orange background. The bottom marking indicates it’s one of the 500 pieces made by Picasso, making it highly rare. No wonder, a collector bought it for over $9,200 on eBay!
3. Chinese Guangxu Period Dragon Plate
This is a late 19th-century Chinese plate from the Guangxu period (1875-1908) featuring rare hand-painted iron red dragons chasing the flaming pearl and a sleek golden border on a white background. The marking on the bottom authenticates the plate’s origin and age, adding to its value.
4. Antique Royal Vienna Hand-painted Portrait Plates
This is a rare set of ten antique porcelain plates by Royal Vienna featuring hand-painted portraits of ten ladies, namely Julia (Lady Peel wife of Sir Robert Peel), Lydia, Una Gitana, Olivia, Child Baby Stuart, Cleopatra, Sommer, Daphne, Ruth, and Countess Pocka, according to Worth Point.
The lifelike portraits are surrounded by an ornate high-relief gold decoration border with scalloped edges. All the plates are signed by artists, Wagner, Richter, and Donath, and their bottoms are marked with Royal Vienna’s iconic beehive mark.
5. Meissen Blue Onion Plate
Featuring one of Meissen’s most popular patterns, this rare handpainted Blue Onion plate features intricate central flower motifs, including stems and blooms, with a decorative border featuring the iconic onion-like flowers. This pattern is highly collectible, with single plates in good condition fetching $500-$2,500, while sets reach tens of thousands.
6. Herend’s Rothschild Plate
This is Herend’s Rothschild plate set, featuring vibrant handpainted birds in different settings, often surrounded by butterflies, insects, and flowers. This rare pattern has historical significance as it was commissioned by Baron Rothschild in the 1860s after finding a lost bird pendant in the Herend factory garden.
Each plate manufactured during the 19th century is hand-painted and decorated with a 24-karat gilding on the edge, making it rare and valuable. This pattern is still produced, but modern pieces aren’t as valuable.
7. Royal Copenhagen Flora Danica Plate
Royal Copenhagen’s Flora Danica is considered one of the most prestigious porcelain patterns still in production. The early examples of this pattern from the 19th or Early 20th Century can be highly valuable, like this Yellow Iris plate sold for almost $1,850 on eBay!
Each piece of this line is hand-painted with a unique botanical illustration inspired by the 18th-century Flora Danica encyclopedia of Danish plants. Besides, the plates have saw-tooth or pierced borders with rich gilding.
Individual Royal Copenhagen’s Flora Danica plates can fetch $1,000-$5,000+, with sets selling for tens of thousands!
8. Russian Palekh Hand-painted “The 4 Elements” Plate
Although not a vintage find, this is a rare Russian Palekh plate featuring a highly detailed hand-painted Greek illustration of The Four Elements: earth, water, air, and fire as goddesses on a black background. The painting is surrounded by a floral scroll border.
The plate is scarce as it was designed by one of Palekh’s well-known contemporary artists, Vera Smirnova, as signed at the bottom of the painting.
9. Limoges Handpainted Scenery Plate
Limoges plates are basically porcelain plates manufactured in Limoges. The 19th and early 20th century examples are quite valuable, like this rare hand-painted example. This charger plate displays a scene of Mozart Visiting Madame de Pompadour with a heavily gilded scroll-like edge.
The plate is marked with the Lazeyras, Rosenfeld & Lehman, common in the 1920s, on the back and signed by the artist Dubois on the front.
10. Royal Worcester Fruit Plate
This Royal Worcester plate, dating back to the late 1800s to early 1900s, features the company’s most collectible design, the realistic hand-painted fruits inside a gilded circular frame with a gilded light pink compartment’s style border.
These collectible vintage plates generally bear the sign of the artist, like this example is signed R. Sebright at the bottom of the painting.
11. Noritake Art Deco Pompadour Lady Plate
Japanese manufacturer Noritake’s hand-painted dishes are highly sought-after. Among those is this rare Art Deco plate featuring a mesmerizing and vibrant portrait of the Pompadour Lady adorned with flowers. Single plates can sell for $200-$800, depending on the condition, while sets can fetch a few thousand.
12. Old Paris Botanical Theme Hand-painted Plate
This is a rare mid-19th-century Old Paris Botanical theme comport plate featuring a beautiful and realistic hand-painted floral motif with detailed blossoms and buds at the center. The border of the plate features rich cobalt blue panels on a cream/pink background with cobalt gilded cobalt blue panels.
How to Identify Authentic Antique Handpainted Plates?
Spotting genuine antique hand-painted plates will require you to pay attention to specific details, including maker marks, painting, and designs. Let’s see how these details help!
Maker’s Marks
Genuine hand-painted dishes typically feature certain marks on them. These marks can be of several types:
- Maker Marks: The manufacturer’s marks can be the names, logos, or specific symbols, for example, Meissen’s sword mark, KPM’s scepter mark, and Royal Vienna’s beehive mark.
- Country Name: Early handpainted plates feature the country of origin marks (must be on imports to the US after 1891). Also, the “Made in…” mark usually indicates a post-1921 example.
- Date Codes: Authentic plates may also display certain numbers, which could be date codes, pattern number, shape number, or size.
Artists’ Signatures
Similarly, artists’ signatures are a vital indicator of authentic hand-painted plates. Most antique handmade plates typically display distinctive signs of the artist who designed and painted the plate.
If the plate features a colored scenery, such as a court scene or landscapes, the signs can be found on the bottom edge, subtly integrated into the design. In other cases, the signs can be found on the underside of the plate.
Check for Hand-Painting
The second best way to identify whether an antique plate is really hand-painted is to check its painting, as there are certain differences in machine-printed and hand-painted designs.
Here’s what you need to look for:
- Brush Strokes: Authentic hand-painted plates display visible brush strokes or slight imperfections in the designs.
- Texture: Run your fingers over the painted motifs to check the texture. Handmade plates often feature an uneven or raised texture.
- Color Application: Hand-painted plates display slight variations in depth or intensity of color, like darker colors in some areas due to pooling. Also, there might be a specific “softness” or fluidity, compared to the hard edges of printed designs.
Subtle Imperfections
Real hand-painted dishes generally show some subtle imperfections. No two examples of the same design or pattern will be identical, there will always be small differences in repeated elements, such as flowers or figures.
