Signed French Plate

Every French household kept a set of everyday plates like these, transferware printed in blue on cream and made to be used at the daily table rather than saved for company. Found in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, this set of signed French plates is decorated with a chrysanthemum pattern in soft blue, the flowers trailing across the well and a fine border running the rim. Transfer printing let a factory lay the same detailed pattern onto plate after plate, which is how good tableware finally reached the everyday French kitchen. Sylvie stacks them on an open shelf and pulls them down for every meal, the faint crazing and soft spots reading as a set that has always been used.