Hand-Painted Safi Ceramic Plates — 23cm & 18cm

Turn the large plate over and the underside tells you what it's made of — raw terracotta at the foot, the same rust-orange clay dug from the ground around Safi, left unglazed where the plate stood in the kiln. Everything above it is worked: a centre rosette, then rings of petals radiating outward, each one outlined in cobalt and filled with fine red hatching and green sprigs. All drawn by hand. Twenty-three centimetres on the large plate, eighteen on the small. This is Safi on Morocco's Atlantic coast, where the blue-and-white tradition has been worked for six centuries.

What Makes It

• Real Safi clay, visible at the foot — the unglazed ring on the base shows the terracotta body underneath. White porcelain would be white all the way through. This is earthenware from the ground around the workshop.
• Painted freehand, no stencil — count the petals on each ring and follow the red hatching inside them. The stroke count varies, the spacing drifts, the green sprigs land in different spots. Two plates, two sets of small differences.
• Two sizes that stack and separate — 23cm for a main course or a shared dish, 18cm for bread, salad, or dessert. The small nests inside the large for storage.
• Deep well on the large plate — it slopes rather than sitting flat, so it holds a saucy dish without spilling and reads as a shallow bowl when you need one.
• Colour under the glaze — the cobalt, red, and green are fired beneath the glaze layer, so nothing scratches off where a knife lands or fades with washing.
• Hangs as well as it serves — the concentric pattern reads from across a room, and two sizes together make a wall arrangement without needing a third piece.

The Craft

Safi's potters dig their clay from the surrounding region and fire it in kilns that have been in the same families for generations. Pulling a plate flat and even without it warping in the kiln is a skill on its own — the wider the plate, the more the clay wants to move. The painting comes after, and it takes longest to learn: a painter spends years on borders before he is trusted with a centre rosette, because the brush cannot be corrected once it touches the unfired glaze. There is no erasing. Every petal on these two plates was drawn correctly the first time.

Details

Care

Hand wash with warm water and mild soap. Avoid abrasive scourers on the painted surface. Not recommended for dishwasher or microwave. Safe for serving and eating.

What's Included

Two plates, wrapped individually and packed in a protective outer box. One Origin Passport card with a QR code — scan it to see the workshop in Safi, the artisan who threw and painted them, the technique, and the GPS coordinates of where they were made. The passport stays with the pair permanently, including if you pass it on.

Ships worldwide via DHL Express. 0 returns across 63 orders. 5.0 rating.