A fine set of 4 European earthenware dinner plates from Caldas da Rainha — a dense border of dark green fan motifs running the full rim, each one precise and repeated, in a pattern that was already old when the Greeks put it on their temples.

The anthemion frieze has been running along the edges of the temples of the civilised world since ancient Greece. It arrived in Portugal via Rome, Byzantium, and the Moorish workshops of Andalusia, and it has not changed much, and we're grateful for that.