Vintage White Porcelain Salad Bowl by Atelier-A

"I use this twelve times a day!" — Patricia Wells exclaims of this small porcelain salad bowl, custom made for her by her favourite potters, Atelier-A, in Saint-Quentin-la-Poterie. Part of her Atelier-A collection and a fixture at Chanteduc, the farmhouse in Vaison-la-Romaine where Patricia and Walter Wells have cooked, taught and entertained for decades, the bowl is handmade porcelain: matte on the outside, smoothly glazed within. Fine horizontal striations wrap the full circumference of the exterior, giving the surface a tactile, almost textile quality, while the interior is clean and white, catching the light. The potter's signature is incised vertically across the stripes — a deliberate mark cutting against the grain. The form is generous and rounded, tapering to a modest foot. Saint-Quentin-la-Poterie, a village in the Gard department of Languedoc, has been a centre of ceramic production since the Middle Ages, supplying pottery to the papal court at Avignon in the fourteenth century. It remains home to working potters today and hosts the annual Terralha festival, one of France's most respected ceramics events. Made by hand, made to order, and used without ceremony every single day, this is exactly the kind of object that defines how Patricia Wells lives and cooks. It would be equally at home on a kitchen shelf, a table set for lunch, or holding fruit on a sideboard.