The Christmas rituals of carving and serving
Christmas Day couldn’t be the same for me without my carving set and enormous serving plate. A few years ago, while researching my book The Modern Kitchen, I started noticing these huge platters on eBay. They are not by any means beautiful pieces of china. These are thick, coarse ware — made from a rough material not much better than plaster and looking, from their overwrought patterns, to be Victorian or early 20th century. I couldn’t quite fathom why there were so many but found myself oddly drawn to them, bought a few and tried to find out more. The patterns were not the delicately applied enamel and gold leaf of the great potteries but usually some kind of cheap transfer, rarely applied without small tears and folds. Some were rough approximations of traditional Chinese willow pattern, others had strange mottoes or quite random images. Many of the larger versions don’t sit completely flat on the table — they would have been rejected as “second” or “third” quality items at the kiln ...