Catalonia Water Vessel

Found in Montpellier but originally Catalan, this 19th-century Spanish water vessel is barro negro, the famous black clay pottery of Verdú, a village that has been making blackware the same way since the 16th century. The black colour comes from the firing rather than any glaze - the clay smoked in a low-oxygen wood fire, the colour rising up out of the kiln rather than being painted on. The two handles are twisted into ropes of clay where they meet the body, a Verdú signature. Vessels like this lived in Catalan farmhouse kitchens as the household water jar, the porous clay sweating just enough to keep the water cool through a long Spanish summer. Sylvie sets it on the kitchen counter with a long handful of olive branches, or empty on a shelf where the shape can do the work on its own.