Why Are Dinner Plates Round?

American Dishware

• American colonists in the early 1600s began making bricks from clay for building. New arrivals to the continent brought with them pottery ware from their native countries. Soon the early settlers were making their own pottery dishware using the natural resources of their new home. This meant they used pottery skills to fashion commonly used dinner dishes, and those dishes were easier to make in round shapes.

Practicality

• Shaping evenly round dinner plates, as opposed to square or oval shapes, was easier for those early pottery makers. Even without a potter's wheel, rolling up evenly sized balls of clay and pressing them into matching circles is easier than making a set of matching oval or square plates. With a potter's wheel, the craftsperson can more easily shape a round dinner plate, thus simplifying the task as compared to shaping an oval or a square plate.

Place Setting

• On the table, a round dinner plate is an efficient shape to place before each diner. When setting the table, you do not have to worry about how to turn the plate as you must do when setting the table using oval or square plates. Turning the round plate clockwise or counterclockwise to any degree makes no real difference in the position of the plate, aside from how the pattern might appear.

Habit

• The cliché that claims people are a creature of habit applies when explaining why most dinner plates tend to be round. While other shaped plates are available, consumers often gravitate toward what they are accustomed to using. Unless there is a practical reason for using another shaped plate, such as the steak restaurant that chooses to use a large oval plate because it fits a large steak, baked potato and vegetable better than a round plate, the consumer often stays with what is more familiar.