Arguably, there were more sensible things to spend £39 on. I’ve recently moved into a flat that needs all the radiators replacing, a full re-plastering and paint job and a new bathroom (not to mention a long list of furniture) and the budget is, in a word, stretched. There isn’t a line on the spreadsheet for ‘unnecessarily chic butter dish’. And yet, there I found myself one Saturday in March standing in Selfridge's, turning over the chocolate brown Hay butter dish I’d just developed a hyper fixation on.
The thing is, our butter dish was looking extremely tired. Grey enamel with a pale (and warped) wooden base, it was bought ten years ago in the Scandi chic everything-must-be-grey era, and lately it had begun to irritate me. Silly, really. But as it takes up prime real estate on the kitchen counter we do look at it rather a lot, and it was letting the side down, particularly on a Sunday morning.
Toast is a weekend thing in our house. Monday to Friday I’m just racing out of the door in the direction of the nearest black americano, but come the weekend breakfast becomes something to linger over. We fire up the filter coffee machine and get out our favourite mugs (a pair of pleasingly uneven handmade earthenware cups from Columbia Road Clay); we buy croissants from the good bakery, open a pot of jam and a fresh pat of butter. Sometimes there’s bacon, occasionally a sticky bun, and there’s always toast. So I’m sure you’ll agree the butter dish really did need an upgrade.
It’s probably worth noting that when I saw it I was in the middle of a fruitless trip to buy a sofa. Frustrated by how many incredibly expensive and ultimately not that comfortable sofas there seemed to be in the world, my £39 butter dish suddenly seemed like a reasonable purchase. It did the trick. I left the shop feeling disproportionately pleased with it. It hit that sweet spot — frivolous yet practical (treats are at their most impactful when they deliver a little of both) and not so expensive I felt guilty about buying it.
The range, from Hay, comes in several colours. I was tempted by the sky blue, ice cream pink and off-white, but something about the almost vintage look of the burgundy ceramic was speaking to me.
In the weeks since, my little luxury has continued to delight me every time I’ve made a piece of toast or just caught a glimpse of it on the counter. We bought a pair of lamps from Tala last weekend with the same dark brown lacquered look, so the only worry now is that we’re beginning to build an entire aesthetic around the butter dish. Then again, maybe that would be no bad thing?
