Vintage Serving Dish

Found in Avignon, this white porcelain dish sits low on a pedestal foot, a fine thread of gilt running around its base. A footed dish is always a little occasion, the way it lifts what it holds an inch above the table, as though the fruit or the sweets deserved a small stage of their own. The French call it a compotier, made to hold fruit or compote and raise it into view, a bit of ceremony for the simplest thing on the table. Sylvie would pile it with figs or lemons, or stand a single candle at its center, and let it lift the whole table an inch.