Tomato Sauce Bowl

Ribbed and lumpy the way a real heirloom tomato is, glazed a deep, almost wet red, with a dark green stem left open at the top to hold a ladle. There's something of the old English country house kitchen in it — the kind of piece pulled from a dresser shelf where painted game birds and cabbage-leaf plates have lived for generations, trompe l'oeil ceramics that took the shape of what they were meant to serve.