Once a staple on 18th-century dinner tables, showstopping soup tureens take center stage in any room of your home.

Beautiful and curvaceous, the soup tureen made its appearance in the late 1600s to accommodate the multicourse meals that became popular during the feast-filled reign of France’s Louis the Great. As the largest piece in a dinner service, the tureen was also a way to display wealth. Most common are patterns in shades of red or blue.

Soup tureens appear at antiques shops and flea markets all over the world, but online specialty stores have become one of the best places to look for discontinued patterns or a specific manufacturer. Sites like edish.com and replacements.com make tracking down a tureen as simple as the click of a mouse—and they ship worldwide. Edish.com updates its inventory four to six times a day, says Marketing Director Don Browne. Or you can contact online dealers with a request for a specific pattern or piece. Work with a reputable seller, whether online or face-to-face.

With only one in a dinnerware set, a tureen can be more expensive than other pieces. Prices generally can range from $175 to $795, depending on condition. Not all tureens are marked, though dealer Theresa Bishop of Madison, Georgia, recommends checking any signings and markings with Encyclopaedia of British Pottery and Porcelain Marks by Geoffrey A. Godden.

For vintage and antique tureens, contact these dealers:
• Edish, edish.com
• Replacements Ltd., replacements.com
• Theresa Bishop, antiquesonthesquare.net
• Nancy Barshter, childhoodantiques.com
• Ann and Eric Granberg, ehrg1@aol.com
• Kay San Juan, sftreasuretrove.com
• Melissa Cooperson, comfortablestyle.com
• Timber Hills Antiques, timberhillsantiques.com