A plate is a plate is—Christmas, as this Christmas plate made in Portugal reminds us. The glazed ceramic with its raised relief decoration looks just as good as tableware as it does as a base for decorative arrangements. With a diameter of 21 centimeters, the Christmas plate is the perfect size to set the festive table as a breakfast or dessert plate. It looks just as appealing when you place tea lights on it, using its color to create a striking contrast to the green of the pine branches. In either case, the deep, rich red—a symbol of love and life and the central color of the Advent and Christmas season—adds a festive glow to your Christmas decorations.

Portuguese ceramics are widely known; their distinctive quality stems from the interplay of traditional craftsmanship and artistic design. An outstanding example of this creative approach to traditional craftsmanship is the Bordallo Pinheiro ceramics factory, founded in 1884 in Caldas da Rainha, north of Lisbon. Its founder, Raphael Bordallo Pinheiro, was not only an expert in ceramics but had also made a name for himself as a caricaturist and artist. Raphael’s creative signature still shapes Bordallo Pinheiro’s ceramics; the designers the company collaborates with today also incorporate his imaginative style into their work. Every single piece produced by Bordallo Pinheiro is carefully handcrafted, with the artisans being as skilled in traditional techniques as they are in contemporary forms of modeling, painting, and ornamentation.