Seven round the table for dinner. Wild mushroom risotto. I was told to sit next to Michael. Good.

Michael makes Palissey ware, which is to say ceramics made in the style of the 16th-century French potter Bernard Palissey. A typical piece of Palissey ware is a platter decorated with three-dimensional casts of snails, snakes, frogs, lizards and fish forming a glazed aquatic or reptilian menagerie.