Wire Fruit Basket

Found in Montpellier, this early 20th-century French wire fruit basket has three tiered baskets stacked on a single iron post, the rims woven in a row of small circles and the whole thing standing on four scrolling iron feet. Tiered wire baskets like this hung in French épiceries and country kitchens through the early 1900s, where the fruit needed to breathe and the cook needed to see it ripening from across the room. Sylvie sets it on the kitchen counter loaded with whatever's in season, the bottom tier always the heaviest and the top always the first to empty.