Kuro Ceramic Dinner Plate

The Kuro Ceramic Dinner Plate is a 26cm black stoneware dinner plate, hand built by Gold Coast-based ceramicist Naoko Rodgers. It's fired at high temperature for everyday use. The hand building leaves each plate slightly different.

A black dinner plate is a decisive choice. Food reads very differently against dark ceramic than white, with pale dishes standing out sharply and darker ones needing more thought, so it suits a cook who plates deliberately rather than one who wants a neutral background.

At 26cm this is a full dinner plate, and at 1cm thick it is slim for something hand built, which takes real skill with slab and coil work. Naoko Rodgers works in high temperature stoneware, so despite being handmade these are made to be used, not displayed. She describes pottery as the art of chemistry, sitting between what a glaze is meant to do and what it actually does in the kiln, and the variation between plates comes directly out of that.