Saint Uze Coffee Pot

For most of a century, a pot like this poured the morning coffee in a French kitchen. Found in Béziers, it stands in crackled cream stoneware, hand-painted with sprigs of blue flowers, a shaped spout on one side and a loop handle on the other. Saint-Uze, a pottery town in the Drôme, turned out coffee pots and pitchers just like it through the late 1800s, each one glazed and painted by hand with the blue flowers that became its signature. Sylvie would keep it out on a shelf or a table, filled with cutting-garden flowers or left to be exactly what it is.