China for a modern 20th anniversary celebration

Some of Katia Mangham’s core memories are as a little girl in a china shop.

While her mother shopped for sparkling porcelain, a young Mangham sat politely in the corner, promising not to touch anything behind the glass.

Until she got home.

There, Mangham’s mother would set her haul on a soft bedspread so her daughters could handle the pieces they were curious about.

Mangham remembers carefully clutching dainty teacups made in Limoges, France. She’d practice pouring from a blue and gold teapot. She’d fashion mock tablescapes.

“We could touch everything and get it out of our system,” Mangham says.

The experience turned out to be formative for Mangham—who, as it turns out, would never truly get it out of her system.

Today, she owns Gourmet Girls, a catering company, café and boutique in Baton Rouge’s Studio Park. She has her hands on china all day, curating a retail collection of fine dinnerware from labels like Astier de Villatte, Herend and Ginori 1735.

She relishes advising customers on which china to buy for a traditional 20th anniversary gift—or as presents for weddings, birthdays and other occasions.

But as dining traditions have become increasingly casual, interest in fine china has been waning for decades, according to The New York Times.

Mangham espouses a different approach.

“I’m not a fan of buying things and putting them in a china cabinet. I’m going to use my special china. I use my sterling every day,” she says.

Mangham savors setting a table, the theater of positioning placemats, plates and flatware.

“When you go through the effort of setting a table,” she says, “whoever is coming and joining you for that meal feels special because you did this for them.”

And at the end of the night, it all goes in the dishwasher. It’s worth a little patina.

This article was originally published in the November 2025 issue of 225 Magazine.