Noël — La Tulipe (Set of 8)

A single flamed tulip, white shot through with crimson, the petals broken and feathered against a warm grey ground. The leaves still look wet. It is the kind of flower painting that was made to outlast the flower by three hundred years, and did.

The broken tulip was the most expensive thing you could put in a vase in seventeenth-century Holland, and the flaming that made it valuable turned out to be a virus — though nobody knew that for another two centuries. Red and white on a warm ground: Christmas colour without a Christmas motif anywhere near it.

Available in 9″ dinner and 7″ salad or dessert sizes, with a coordinating bowl. Eight plates.