Children's Tableware

When my daughter first started solid foods, I promptly bought a couple sets of decent-looking silicone tableware. It seemed practical: indestructible, a plate that suctioned to the high chair, and not exactly plastic. Silicone may be a step above plastic in terms of chemical leaching—although even quality food-grade silicone can begin to leach once cracked or cut—but it is no more biodegradable.

I then borrowed from the Waldorf and Montessori approach to dining: children eat from real, breakable tableware—ceramic plates, glass cups—and learn accordingly. They move more carefully, treat things with care, and eat more or less as the adults do. There is also a specialness to having your very own little cup and dish as a child, which I remember well.

I graduated from silicone to stainless steel and enamel, and more recently to ceramic. This edit is for the children in your life—your own, a friend’s, a niece or nephew—or for introducing a little of the unexpected into your own cabinet.

From top left:

Toast Enamel Picnic Bowl
One of the better colors of enamelware I’ve seen in a while, this Picnic Bowl, in Cumin, can be paired with a Contrast Rim Mug and Enamel Plate.

Enza Fasano Folk Pasta Bowl
Based in Puglia, the Fasano family has been handmaking pottery for generations. I had the chance to visit the workshop of Enza’s father, Nicola Fasano, in Grottaglie years back. Enza hand paints this personality-filled tableware—a Horse, a Farmer, a Jester—in a Pasta Bowl, Dinner Plate, or Cereal Bowl.

Kay Bojesen Child’s Set
I love most things Kay Bojesen, especially when it comes to children’s tableware and toys. The Child’s Set is a reproduction in polished stainless steel of an archival silver plate and cup. It’s the sort of set you use and pass down to your grandchildren, no doubt.