Flower Plate: A Turquoise Petal for Snacks, Sweets and Small Things

The small plate is the most underrated object in a home. It is the plate that holds the biscuit with the tea, the almonds before dinner, the rings at the end of the day, the earrings on the morning you are running late. It is used constantly and considered almost never.

The Flower Plate is a small plate that has been considered. It is shaped like a single open flower, with a scalloped petal edge traced by a thin white line, and finished in a saturated turquoise glaze with a glossy sheen.

The shape of a petal

A circle is the safest shape a plate can be made in. A flower is riskier, because the petal edge is a commitment: you either like the form or you do not, and there is no neutral position.

The payoff is that the petals give the plate a soft, irregular outline, which does something useful on a table. It breaks the grid. Round plates on a rectangular table create a pattern; a scalloped one interrupts it, and the table instantly looks less like it was set by a machine.

The scalloped edge also gives the plate the thing every small plate needs: a place for the hand. You pick it up by a petal, which is a more pleasant way to carry a plate than gripping a flat disc.

The colour

Turquoise is a colour that sits between the sea and the sky, and it does something no neutral can do: it holds its own in a room that is already full of warm wood and cream cloth. Put it next to a beige table and it wakes up. Put it next to a stack of white plates and it makes them look intentional rather than plain.

It is also a colour that photographs beautifully, which matters if you are the sort of person who takes a picture before eating. Which, in the year we are living in, is most of us.

What a small plate is for

Snacks, in the broadest sense: biscuits, a piece of fruit cut up, a handful of peanuts, a samosa in the afternoon. Sweets, especially Indian ones, which look better on a coloured plate than on a white one — the contrast makes the food read as more than it is.

Then everything that is not food. Jewellery by the basin. Soap in a guest bathroom. Change by the door. Keys. A candle. The small dish that catches everything you would otherwise lose in a drawer. A plate that holds objects is still a plate.

One thing to know about stacking

If you stack these with other plates, do it gently. The petal points are the thinnest part of the form, and they are where a chip would happen. Put something soft between the plates, keep the stack short, and these will still be in the kitchen in twenty years.

Care

Stoneware, hand-glazed, fired twice. Dishwasher-safe, though hand-washing is kinder to the glaze over decades. Avoid sudden temperature changes and avoid scouring powders. That is the whole of it.

The point

Colour is the cheapest way to make a home feel like it was chosen rather than inherited. A turquoise plate is a small object, but it is also a decision — and a decision is what separates a home from a space with furniture in it.

See the collection for the rest of the pieces.