Stoneware Platter and Serving Bowls

Details

Serving pieces that go into the oven, come to the table and then into the fridge, so a dish is not decanted three times for no reason. Same 1,220 C stoneware and the same fired-in matte glaze as the dinner set, so they sit together without matching in a laboured way. Serveware is measured differently from a plate and it is worth saying why, because the difference is not cosmetic. A platter or a bowl is hollowware, an article that can be filled, so ISO 6486 measures its release per litre of the food it holds rather than per square decimetre of surface. Tested to ISO 6486-1, a 24 hour soak in 4 percent acetic acid at 22 C in the dark, these release under 0.1 mg of lead per litre and under 0.02 mg of cadmium, against ISO 6486-2 hollowware limits of 4.0 and 0.3. That test is more searching here than on a dinner plate, because a serving dish is where the acidic food actually sits: the biryani with tomato and lime in it, the dahi, the imli chutney, and it sits there hot and for hours. Anything decorated on top of the glaze would show it, and that is precisely why nothing here is.

• Lead under 0.1 mg per litre and cadmium under 0.02, ISO 6486-1 method against ISO 6486-2 hollowware limits, every glaze lot
• No on-glaze decoration at all: no decals, no printed rim, no metallic band, no lustre. The colour is in the glaze, fired at 1,220 C
• Vitrified body, water absorption under 1 percent by ASTM C373, so it does not drink oil or hold the smell of last week's fish
• Glaze fit matched to the body and thermal-cycle tested, because crazing is where a safe glaze stops being safe
• Deep 34 cm oval platter with a 5 cm well, and 1.6 L serving bowls with wide flat bases that sit steady when hot
• Oven to 180 C from room temperature, dishwasher and microwave safe
• Same glaze family as the stoneware dinner set, and both are open stock
• Fridge to oven is not allowed. Let the dish come to room temperature first. Stoneware takes heat well and takes a sudden change badly
• It is heavy, 1.6 kg for the platter, and it will chip against a steel sink
• Soak it rather than scraping it with metal, and expect tone to vary between pieces