When the French treasures move to their new home (2024)

The thing with the French coffee bowls has crept over the years and has become a passion.

Katerina has been collecting the old French coffee bowls for many years and their stories, colours, patina, life still fascinate and Mikkel too has been caught up in their fantastic universe.

A coffee bowl is a bowl used in France to drink your morning coffee from. It's hot milk with espresso in it. And the reason why the morning coffee must be served in one of the French coffee bowls is pure practicality – you have to be able to dip your croissant or baguette in coffee and you can't do that nearly as easily in a small cup .

You get your first French coffee bowl when you are 6-7 years old and you want to have the same bowl throughout your life. Even if it gets a few chips or hairline cracks, even if it takes on color over the years after a lot of use, yes, you have the same bowl in which you enjoy your morning coffee every morning.

In several places in France, it is even still tradition that you take your coffee bowl with you in your coffin when you die.

There are countless different French coffee bowls

They are available in primarily 4 sizes and are slightly different in design from earthenware house to earthenware house. The oldest French coffee bowls are both handmade and hand painted. Some of the oldest coffee bowls we have in the shop date back to the 1700th century and are iron porcelain.

In France, there are a large number of faience houses and they all have their own special style in coffee bowls. Some models and designs are made in great numbers and others are only made in a very limited edition and some only a single one exists. Age, rarity, condition and the design of a coffee bowl are today what determine the value of the bowl and for many it is something you collect.

One of the large and very popular earthenware houses when we talk about coffee bowls is the earthenware house DIGOIN (Digoin-Sarregumines). Their very colorful bowls with flowers or very graphic patterns are among some of the most requested bowls, both here in Denmark and in other countries, e.g. also in France.

Here in Denmark, we fortunately also use them for a wide range of other purposes than just for the morning coffee.

We use them for breakfast, for the sweets bowl, for dip, salads, soup. We use them in our table setting, where they are in a mix with them fine French faience plates, provides a personal and beautifully inviting table. We also use them for decoration - either just beautiful as they are, or with small flowers in them. The most popular colors at home are green, blue and yellow. But the bowls come in every imaginable color and with beautiful patterns and flowers. Among other things. you will find some very special coffee bowls, which we here at home call nun porcelain. They have hand-painted flowers and writing such as "Amitie" or "Souvenir". These bowls are particularly sought after both at home and abroad, as they are both very old and rare. The oldest can be dated all the way back to around the beginning of the 1800th century.

Our private collection

The pictures here are from our own private collection of coffee bowls and show some of our favorites - although it's really hard to pick out some as favorites over others... But the very rare ones we have in our collection can't be ignored now have a special place in our hearts. We use them French coffee bowls – bol bowls every day, for coffee, for breakfast, for salads, for snacks and not least for decoration. And Katerina in particular loves getting up every morning and carefully choosing WHICH bowl she wants to use.

Why this love for the French coffee bowls?

The wonderful older Brocanteur explained to us many years ago WHAT it is about these coffee bowls that makes them so special and that makes you have the same bowl all your life and NOT replace it just because it gets a little chipped and cracked … He said: It is with the bowls as it is with our beautiful women – they all age and not all with the same grace, but WE love them regardless!

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If you want, you can also read about ours shopping trips to France