The best of these were never meant to be looked at, only reached for. Found in Béziers, this 19th century jar has a tapering cream-glazed body, two looped handles, and a conical lid, the cobalt brushed on loose and worn to bare clay at the rims and base. Jars like this were Spanish orzas, the storage pots that held the year's olives, lard, or sausages packed down under oil, their walls thick enough to keep what was inside cool and dark before there were refrigerators. Before factory dyes existed, the blue came from raw cobalt the Andalusian potters hauled over the Sierra Nevada by mule from Almería, and because the mineral was never pure, no two were ever painted quite the same shade. Sylvie keeps it on the counter with the lid off, a bundle of wooden spoons standing in it beside the stove.
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