Spain painted its everyday china in cobalt long before the rest of Europe worked out how. Found in Béziers, the cup and saucer carry a cream glaze under loose cobalt foliage, the color worn to bare clay at the rim and foot. Before factory dyes existed, the blue came from raw cobalt the Andalusian potters hauled in by mule from Almería, and because the mineral was never pure, no two cups were ever painted quite the same shade. Sylvie loves it for the first coffee of the morning, carried out to the garden before the house is awake. She sets it on the stone step beside a bowl of figs and lets the cup outlast the quiet.
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