Silver Plat à Four

Found in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, this French plat à four is heavy silverplate hotelware, the kind made for restaurants and grand hotel kitchens at the turn of the century. The maker's mark on the underside is a beautiful one - two horse heads facing each other in an oval, manes flowing - a small symbol that lived on the bottom of every piece in a hotel's silver service. We haven't attributed it to a specific maison (worth its own afternoon down a rabbit hole), but the weight and the triple-plating tell you everything about where it lived. Hotel silver was made dense and heavy on purpose, built to survive a thousand dinner services and still come back to the table looking like silver. Sylvie sets it on the table with a roast chicken and lemons, or on the counter as a tray for bottles and glasses at the end of the day.