Lady Clare Placemats

Traditional Lady Clare placemats

With the experience that comes after manufacturing quality tableware products for nearly 100 years, Lady Clare placemats are recognized as one of the top makers of British placemats. With classic, traditional designs that are popular both in the UK and around the world. The range of these designs are ideal for bringing a fantastic look and feel to your dining room, particularly if you are looking for a traditional touch to match your dining room’s decor.

The borders of the traditional Lady Clare placemats are either a dark green, blue and sometimes in a rich dark red. This sober color choice enhances the classic feel to the design and this is further enhanced by the hand finished gold edging. The gilded edging also keeps the edge of the placemat completely sealed and helps to protect from chips and knocks.

History and origin of Lady Clare placemats

Starting in the 1930’s and born out of the necessity to regularly update the decorative style for dinner guests without completely redecorating the dining room or buying new furniture. Lady Clare Pigott as the busy wife of a British diplomat stationed in Paris, was concerned at the high laundry costs associated with washing white tablecloths after hosting so many formal dinners.

Also, Lady Clare Pigott was a collector of antique prints and she came up with the great idea of fixing some of these interesting and stylish prints onto hardboard and glazing the surface with multiple layers of lacquer, this hardened the surface of the prints and the hardboard kept the prints rigid.

Then she could place these newly created tablemats straight onto her dining table without needing to use her white table lines. This not only protected the dining tables at the British Embassy and her home, but they became a huge talking point for her dinner guests, who then insisted that she make some of these stylish new table mats for them.

British made, traditional placemats

Coinciding with the economic conditions of the time the idea of having reusable placemats for a relatively small price allowed many more households to entertain their dinner guests. With the post war house building boom in the UK and the USA and the demands of an emerging consumer society the Lady Clare company was able to expand and meet the place mat requirements of both formal dinner parties and casual domestic dining.

This was the start of the Lady Clare company which now still supplies the world with top quality luxury place mats and coasters from their factory in England. These British made traditional placemats are found in many of the historic households throughout England, including a custom set of 60 place mats presented as a gift to the Queen of England in 2012 by the British government.