Black Portuguese Bowl

This bowl is black for one reason, the way it was fired, buried in a smoking earth pit with the air shut out until the clay turned dark. Found in Béziers but made in Portugal in the 19th century, this wide, shallow earthenware basin has a thick rolled rim, shaped by hand so its sides are never perfectly even. Portuguese potters have worked this black pottery, louça preta, for five hundred years, firing their everyday bowls and pots under smouldering brush and earth, and a big basin like this did the rough kitchen work of mixing, washing, and holding whatever the day’s cooking needed. Sylvie sets it out on a kitchen counter filled with apples and pears, its dark, hand-thrown shape a quiet thing among the bright fruit.