Ceramic Teapot

Barjac sits in the far north of the Gard, a region whose clay soils have kept potters at their wheels for centuries, and this teapot came out of it. Found in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon and made in the 1930s, it is thrown stoneware, low and round, with the rings of the wheel still showing under a speckled glaze of ochre and rust, a short spout, a tall looping handle, and a lid topped with a small knob. Its maker left every mark of the hand on it, the uneven speckling where iron in the clay broke through the glaze in the heat of the kiln, and no two pots from a workshop like this ever came out quite the same. Sylvie brews a pot of verbena in it on a cold afternoon and leaves it on the kitchen table to steep.

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