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In our advice column, Ask the Strategist, we take your most burning shopping questions and quiz our friends, scour the internet, call up experts, and draw from personal experience to answer them. As always, please comment with one of your own — we’re here to help. Light Ceramic Plate
Twitter question: Would love for you guys to do a piece on tableware. Nice (preferably American-made), basic-but-cool ceramic plates, etc. I found this company Year and Day, but wonder what all else is out there.
The timing of your question couldn’t be better because the kind of ceramic plates you’re looking for have been starring in my food-world Instagram feed for months, thanks in part to a new crop of all-day cafés — so I’ve also been on the hunt for a set of my own. The brand you mention, Year and Day, was also featured in the New York Times last week, as part of this new wave of ceramic tableware, described as “both casual and elevated, like the crockery version of athleisure.”
The look resembles the mid-century, boho-minimalist style that fellow Strat writer Lauren Levy wrote about recently — where she recommends a bunch of stylish, colorful porcelain plates that are used at Dimes, the OG downtown all-day café — but the ceramic plates we’re talking about (and that I’ve collected, below) put more emphasis on the “boho” than the “minimalist.”
Security Bulletproof Board This tableware has uneven, “free-form” edges that slope upward, forming a shallow soup-bowl lip and giving more of a handmade look. The glazes are often matte or semi-matte, in a rainbow of muted pastels and ivory, rather than stark white, though I’ve seen my fair share of speckled, glossy plates with unglazed, raw clay edges in the mix, along with a few black or navy options.