Rhombe White, Rhombe Color or Rhombe Earth: How to Choose

Three Lyngby Porcelæn ranges carry the same diamond relief: Rhombe in crisp white, Rhombe Color under a saturated glaze, and Rhombe Earth in muted mineral shades. They read as variations on one idea, yet each behaves differently once food is on the plate and daylight moves across the table. This guide sets the three next to each other and explains how to combine them on one table.

The relief all three ranges share

The rhombus motif comes from the Lyngby Porcelæn archives and was first launched in 1961, on the oven-proof Danild range. On the plates made today it is not a printed decoration. The diamonds are worked into the handmade porcelain as a relief, so what you see is a pattern of light and shadow rather than ink sitting on a surface. That distinction matters more than it sounds. Printed decoration competes with what you serve. A relief disappears under a plated main course and reappears at the rim, which is why the same plate carries a Tuesday lunch and a long dinner without looking out of place.

The geometry stays constant across the three ranges. The Rhombe Plate Ø21 cm white measures 21 cm across and 2.5 cm high, and weighs 0.41 kg. The glazed and earth-toned lunch plates keep the same 21 cm diameter and the same 2.5 cm height, at 0.43 kg. The choice in front of you is therefore about surface, not about form: identical facets, three different ways of catching the light.

Rhombe in white: the foundation

White is the version that behaves like a base layer. Karakter Copenhagen shaped the Rhombe range for Lyngby Porcelæn, a house that has been making porcelain since 1936, and the clean glaze gives the relief the strongest contrast of the three. Every facet keeps a defined edge, and in raking light from a window or a low pendant the shadows in the pattern do most of the decorative work.

Practically, white is the easiest of the three to build on, because it sits under everything: coloured glass, ridged stoneware, linen in any shade, a single serving piece in a strong colour. If you are buying one range to live with for years and want to keep your options open later, start here. Use it as the element that repeats. Six or twelve white lunch plates will carry a buffet, a weekday table and a festive menu equally well, and they let one coloured piece do all the talking.

Rhombe Color: glaze that deepens the facets

Rhombe Color takes the same pressed relief and puts a saturated glaze over it. The colours were selected with the Copenhagen design duo Stilleben, and they produce an effect the white version cannot: the glaze gathers very slightly in the valleys of the pattern and thins across the ridges, so each diamond reads as two tones of the same colour. The pattern gains depth instead of losing it under colour.

The Rhombe Color Lunch plate Ø21 cm is offered in Rose and in Aqua, at 21 cm across, 2.5 cm high and 0.43 kg. Having one warm and one cool option in a single range is useful. Rose settles into a table with wood, brass and warm white candles. Aqua is cooler and stays clean next to clear glass and white porcelain. Both are strong enough to be used sparingly: a stack of coloured lunch plates under white dinner plates shows a ring of colour at the rim, and that is usually all a table needs.

Rhombe Earth: muted tones that read as texture

Rhombe Earth is the quietest of the three. Stilleben, the duo of Ditte Reckweg and Jelena Schou Nordentoft, chose four muted shades for it: Moss, Marble, Clay and Slate. Because the saturation is low, the eye stops reading these plates as coloured and starts reading the relief as texture, which brings the porcelain closer in feeling to matt stoneware. The intention behind the range is slower eating and more attention paid to the food and to the people at the table.

The Rhombe Earth Lunch plate Ø21 cm moss is the grey-green of the four, at 21 cm across and 0.43 kg, matching the white and glazed lunch plates exactly in size. The Rhombe Earth Dinner plate Ø27 cm steps up to 27 cm across, 2.5 cm high and 0.75 kg, in Marble (a soft beige) or Clay. The dinner plate is the largest flat area a guest looks at all evening, so it is the piece that sets the temperature of the whole setting. Earth tones there give you a calm, slightly matt field for food with a lot of colour of its own.

The three ranges compared

Mixing all three on one table

Because the diameters and the relief match, the three ranges stack physically and visually. The reliable approach is to give each range a job rather than spreading them evenly.

• Largest piece sets the tone. Put Rhombe Earth at dinner plate size and keep the layers above it lighter. A Marble or Clay Ø27 cm plate under a white Ø21 cm lunch plate gives a warm outer ring and a clean inner field.
• One colour, repeated. If you bring in Rhombe Color, use a single shade around the whole table instead of alternating Rose and Aqua. Repetition reads as a decision; alternation reads as leftovers.
• Keep white in the majority. Roughly two thirds white to one third coloured or earth-toned keeps the relief legible. Above that, the facets start to disappear into the colour.
• Match the metal and the glass, not the plates. Cutlery and stemware repeated across every setting do more for coherence than matching porcelain does.

Care is the same across all three: dishwasher safe and microwave safe, which is the reason these ranges end up in daily use rather than in a cupboard. If you like a relief that works this way, the ridged stoneware in Hammershøi by Kähler solves a similar problem with grooves instead of diamonds. For plates, bowls and glass that sit well with Rhombe in any of its three finishes, browse the full Tableware collection.