Herend in Hungary

One of the highlights from my recent trip to Europe was seeing a Herend store in Bupapest.  I would have loved to have seen the Herend factory (read about that here).

We saw several stores that only sold Herend and the stores were small but packed to the hilt. The prices were better than they are in the US but only by about 25 percent.  If you had to ship to the US then you'd lose a lot of those savings.

The best places we found to buy Herend were in the antique stores and we found one that had a nice selection of Herend and the prices were definitely better.  

I wanted to buy a piece that I had never seen in the US, that was my goal.  Here are some of the pieces we saw:

(To get an idea of the price, the Euro was almost one to one against the dollar - this one would have been about $260 US).

 I almost bought this platter but wasn't sure I would ever use it and and it was very large.  This is a pattern I have never seen before.

 And I wish I had bought this and shipped it home.  This is a "practice" piece, the marking on the bottom is different than the others and it was used for the apprentices to practice painting as all Herend china is hand-painted, even today. 

And here is the piece I bought.  It is small, about 6 inches high and it's not white but a pale blue-gray and the color is made from octapus ink.  It's very chinoiserie which is not typically my style but I just had never seen this pattern before.  Love Herend and I'll always remember buying this small piece in Budpest in 2019.