Dinnerware
Rosanna Tableware Unveiled
Jars Ceramistes Releases Three New Colors for Tourron Collection
Jars Céramistes launches three new hues with multi layers of color in its Tourron collection, showcasing the company’s expertise in the art of glazing. The new colors: Eucalyptus, Pollen and Blue Linen, burst like sunshine from the center of the plates and bowls blending glazes to create both pattern and color. The cream and black exteriors offer contrast to each piece creating a palate that is easy to mix and match with all heirloom or family-favorite tableware or accessories.
The new colors feel like a spa vacation. Eucalyptus is green with undertones of gray and blue and is both rejuvenating and serene. Pollen spreads harmony and a soft canvas to complement just about any color combination, and blue linen delivers depth and dimension.
Tourron, like all Jars collections, is handcrafted in France. The dinnerware graces the tables of Michelin Star restaurants around the world, yet it is meant to be used daily in the home. It was specifically designed to be dishwasher and microwave safe.
The new colors are available in a dinner plate, dessert plate, large bowl, soup plate, pasta bowl cereal bowl, fruit cup, pitcher and oil cruet. Prices range from $38 to $86 depending upon the shape. This handmade stoneware is fired at around 2340 F. At this firing temperature, stoneware gets its very unique properties giving it the name “noble ceramic.”
Jars’ history spans more than 150 years. Founded by Pierre Jars, the traditional crafts of potters’ skills and trade secrets were passed down throughout the generations. Jars’ success resonated in Paris when he was awarded the Grand Prize at the Exposition Universelle and again in 2010 when Jars Céramistes earned EPV status (Entreprise Francaise du Patrimoine Vivant), the French Companies Living Heritage award. Today more than 50 percent of French Michelin two-and- three-star restaurants use Jars for their dinnerware service.
Villeroy & Boch Manufacture Rock Glow
Villeroy & Boch‘s Manufacture Rock tableware collection will appeal to consumers who have embraced the modern design trend that emphasizes natural materials and fine craftsmanship with porcelain tableware that mimics the look of slate. Recreated on a fine relief with a touch of glaze, the characteristic layers of rock give the tableware the look and feel of the native stone. In its new Manufacture Rock Glow products, the company builds on that look with elegant copper accents that gleam with a soft metallic sheen but present no incompatibility with either dishwasher or microwave oven. The new Glow products can be mixed and matched with other items in the Manufacture Rock collection, which is available in either the elegant black that people expect when they think of slate or as Manufacture Rock Blanc, which is brilliant white. Five items are available in the Manufacture Glow line: saucers in three sizes and flat bowls.
Glasses and cutlery from the tableware collection also add elegant copper detailing to table settings. The crystal glasses for white wine, red wine and champagne feature a soft copper color gradient along the delicate stem, which flows seamlessly into the bowl. The red shimmering metal of the matching Manufacture cutlery has a fine matte finish and streamlined shapes.
Authentic Stoneware for a Touch of Farmhouse Kitchen Style
By Lorrie Baumann
Stoneware from La Manufacture de Digoin has now become part of the extensive range of fine European imports offered by The French Farm. While The French Farm’s product range is centered on fine foods, it also includes cutlery collections by Jean Dubost, handcrafted olive wood utensils from Berard, lavender-scented personal and home care products from Le Chatelard 1802, Jacquard tea towels from Coucke, The French Farm collection of wood cutting and service boards, and now, traditional farmhouse-style stoneware items from La Manufacture de Digoin. “Since we do very well with housewares, I decided to bring in the Digoin line a few months ago. People have seen it in gift shows in France,” said Gisele Oriot, The French Farm’s Founder. “It has been a really old-fashioned line that has had a new look by the new owner of the company.”
The new stoneware was made in a French factory in Burgundy that was founded in 1875 as a family-owned business that specialized in handcrafted pottery and made the kinds of objects typically found in a 19th-century French farmhouse kitchen – the pitcher for the milk, the jug for the cool drinking water, the crock for the pickles. “I’m actually from Burgundy, and we still have my grandfather’s farm, and there was always a brown jug and a jar, and everything was manufactured by the Digoin company,” Oriot said. “It would say ‘Digoin’ on the item. Everything was brown – no red, no yellow, just brown.” Once those farmhouses gained electric power, the need for many of those objects was superseded by refrigeration. Cheap plastics came into those kitchens, and the factory’s business declined. The company was in its last throes when it was rescued by Corinne Jourdain and a group of investors. “Her ambition was to perpetuate a historical expertise and to bring back to former glory those meaningful culinary objects,” according to the company.
For Jourdain, that meant keeping the company’s traditional craftsmanship but updating its sense of style, starting with the addition of colored glazes that would fit into the modern design aesthetic of a contemporary kitchen. “’Let’s do some blue. Let’s do some green.’ She basically took a new look at the whole line,” Oriot said. “This was in 2014. It’s starting to catch on. They’re selling to gift shops and upscale restaurants in France. She’s making it fashionable again.”
Oriot saw the new line for the first time in one of those gift shops when she went back to France on a visit to family there. Then she found out that the factory was nearby and offered tours – and also factory sales. “I went to see the old factory, and it was like magic. There was all this clay, and she had all these beautiful colors,” Oriot recalls. “I took a tour and asked her if she had a distributor in the U.S. She didn’t.”
Oriot placed an order, added the line to her catalog and premiered it at a New York gift show. “We’re shipping everywhere now,” she said. “There is interest in the line.” The collection offered in the U.S. by The French Farm includes a Large and Small Jug, Cruet, Canister with Lid, Vinegar Jar, baking dishes, salad and serving bowls, a utensil crock and terrines like those that French charcuteriers once used in their shops. “The butcher or the charcuterier would bake their recipe in those big brown dishes,” Oriot said. “They would finish the pate and clean it [the terrine] and bake another one in it and sell it by the slice.”
The stoneware is durable and oven-safe, she added. “You can cook in it. It’s very, very strong.”
For more information, visit www.thefrenchfarm.com.
Fattoria Collection from Casafina
The quintessential farmhouse look is the foundation of this collection from Casafina Living called Fattoria. The collection comprises a lovely and robust dinner set with a dinner plate, salad plate, soup/cereal bowl and a mug and a variety of cooking/baking and serveware pieces. Those include three sizes of bakers, two rectangular and one square, as well as three sizes of mixing bowls that can also be used as serving bowls.
There are also three sizes of pitchers, an oval platter, three other baking pans, batter bowls and measuring cups as well as a lovely colander and other useful and decorative kitchen accessories. As a whole the collection will transport those who love the look of an Italian kitchen but want their own kitchens to have a more contemporary approach while maintaining traditional country charm.
All items are available in white, while a subset of pieces (bakers, batter and mixing bowls, ramekins and creamers) can be purchased in a pale gray as well as a retro green. Made from high-quality fine stoneware, all items are dishwasher, oven, freezer and microwave safe.
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