Also running dishwasher loads of old partial dinner and tea services. All bar one is incomplete - but they were good china in their day...
I know I can't regularly run them in dishwasher or they will bleach, but one run should be OK.

If the decoration on the china includes "gold" or "silver" colours (usually lines around other parts of the decoration, dishwashers aren't a good idea even once.

Apart from the usual caveat concerning the detergents used in dishwashers there's the elevated temperatures used in most. Bone handles are best kept out of hot water, even when washing up the old fashioned way and older china services were produced in anticipation of being washed in water no hotter than your hands could handle, using soap that was unsophisticated.

The only dishwashers I use rely on two hands and some persuasion but I recall seeing the after effects of dishwashers on aluminium surfaces; something in the detergent and/or temperature caused many aluminium surfaces to darken; it may have been the use of dishwashers and incautious selection of detergents & temperatures that caused the darkening that has been described above. It seems to me that the almost universal use of dishwashers that has lead to the replacement of most metals in cookware (copper, brass, aluminium, cast iron and ordinary steel) with stainless steel.

Ditto for perfectly good carbon steel knives, especially ones with timber handles; dishwashers don't do any part of them a lot of good whereas washing them by hand, one at a time seems to prolong their sharpness and general useability. But then, I'm known as a bit of a Luddite.

Cheers, Rowan