Four Wine Varietal Plates in Relief-Moulded Grapes and Vine, MWW Market, c. 1995–2010

The Piece

Four small round plates, each given over to a single grape variety, and the whole design is worked in relief rather than printed. A gnarled vine runs around the well as a raised ring, twisting and throwing off tendrils that curl back on themselves, and inside it hangs one bunch of grapes with a broad vine leaf beside it.

The four are painted apart from one another and that is where the charm sits: Cabernet in deep violet, Zinfandel in an inky slate blue, Merlot in the palest sea green, and Chardonnay in a warm coral pink. Each name is written along the lower edge in loose green script, in a hand that runs uphill slightly.

The ground is a soft cream with an all-over fine crackle in the glaze, and the leaves carry a dry biscuit-coloured edging where the green thins out. The relief is deep enough to feel under a thumb.

History & Provenance

The reverse of each plate is printed: a square device enclosing stylised hands, over MWW MARKET, with MADE IN CHINA and MICRO WAVEABLE AND DISHWASHER SAFE.

MWW Market is the giftware line of Manual Woodworkers & Weavers, an American home-goods company. These were made in China for that line and sold as decorative tableware, not produced by a pottery under its own name.

Two things stated plainly, because the surface invites the wrong conclusion. The crackle is a deliberate glaze effect, not age. It runs uniformly across the fronts, the backs, and the foot rings alike, which is how a manufactured crackle behaves and is not how genuine age-crazing develops. And these are contemporary decorative plates, not antiques — the microwave and dishwasher wording on the base is modern safety marking and dates them to the period below.

What they actually are is a well-made piece of wine-country decorative design from the era when that look was everywhere, executed with better modelling than most of its competition. The vine is genuinely three-dimensional and the four colourways were thought about.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

These are display objects first and they are unusually good at it, because they were designed to be seen edge-on in a rack rather than flat on a table. Four in a row give you a run of four different colours held together by one repeated form — the thing a good shelf arrangement is always reaching for and rarely gets.

They also work hard in a kitchen. At this size they take a wedge of cheese, a few olives, a teabag, a piece of toast, or a wedge of lemon beside a glass. Four is the right number for a small table.

And the theme lands where it should. A wine room, a bar cart, a kitchen wall, a tasting-room counter, or a gift for anyone who takes an interest — the varieties are named on the face, so it explains itself.

A note on care: the base says dishwasher and microwave safe and that is the manufacturer's claim, but we would still hand wash these. The crackle glaze is finely cracked by design, which means the surface is more porous than a plain glaze and will take up colour from anything strongly pigmented left sitting in it. Wash in warm water with mild soap, dry at once, and do not soak. Keep beetroot, turmeric, red wine and berries off the well if you want the cream to stay cream.