The spinning green fronds and hand-dotted cobalt rim of Caldas da Rainha stretched across an oval — a form that has been carrying food to the centre of Portuguese tables for centuries.
The oval is the most generous shape in ceramics. It asks to be filled, passed and returned to. The pattern, which commands a round plate, does something different here — it moves, the way a procession moves, from one end to the other.
JJ places this in the middle and lets it anchor everything around it.