There's a kind of beauty in things that don't try to impress. Things that sit on the table quietly, that accompany food without covering it, that over time become as familiar as the faces of people you see every day. The cream dinner plate with little flowers is that kind of object. It doesn't change the way you eat; it changes the way you sit at the table, making it a moment when even what you use has a story to tell.
Maurizio makes it in Altomonte, in the province of Cosenza. He throws it on the wheel with clay from the Calabrian hills, glazes it in the same cream shade he has used for years, and adds the little flowers by hand, one by one, before firing. It isn't a decoration applied afterwards: it's part of the piece, goes into the kiln with it and comes out with the same nuances and the same controlled imperfection as everything made without moulds. Every plate is slightly different. The flowers shift by a few millimetres, the background colour varies from one piece to the next. These aren't flaws: they're the marks of work done by hand, with the care you put into something you want to last.
The cream background is the natural colour of the clay under a light glaze. Not white, not beige, but something in between that suits any food you put on it. The red of a tomato sauce, the green of grilled vegetables, the gold of oil poured over bread. A colour that competes with nothing and leaves room for the food, quite literally.
The dinner plate is the everyday one. Right for lunchtime pasta, for the evening main course, for bread and oil in the morning when you don't feel like anything else. It's the size you bring to the table without thinking, taking its place without crowding the rest. In terracotta it feels different in your hand from industrial ceramics: more solid, more present, with a surface temperature you notice before the food even arrives.
Glazed terracotta doesn't have the drawbacks of the porous kind: it doesn't absorb liquids or hold on to smells, and washes normally. Maurizio's glazes are non-toxic, tested for food contact and suitable for everyday use. The plate is dishwasher safe, although washing it by hand extends the life of the glaze and keeps the colours like new.
In Calabria, handmade terracotta tableware filled the dressers of family homes for centuries. Not because there was nothing else, but because what came from the hands of local craftsmen had a quality mass production never managed to copy. The weight was right, the colour lasted, the shape was designed for a real table, not a shop shelf. Braalla offers this plate because we believe those things still matter – that it's worth eating every day from something made by hand by someone, for someone who'll use it with their hands.
On your table at home, beside the bread and oil, with a sauce that has been filling the kitchen with its aroma for an hour: this plate fits in everywhere without ever looking out of place. It's the kind of object you don't notice until it's gone. And when it's gone, you miss it.
Handmade in Altomonte by Maurizio. Calabrian clay, non-toxic glazes. Suitable for everyday use and the dishwasher.
