Zerka Plate
Individual Plate with Rising Walls
Handmade by Chmissa in Sejnane, the Zerka Plate combines a broad centre with rising walls at an individual scale. Two long-legged birds and a repeated geometric border give its light earthen surface a distinctive graphic structure.
- Maker: Chmissa
- Origin: Sejnane, northern Tunisia
- Object: Individual plate with rising walls
- Diameter: Approximately 27 cm
- Method: Built and decorated directly by hand without a potter’s wheel
- Surface: Two long-legged birds, black linear markings and a geometric border
- Variation: Dimensions, profile, markings and surface tone may differ between handmade pieces
Zerka provides a broad central surface for arranging an individual meal. Its walls rise around that centre before the rim opens outward, offering more containment than a conventional flat plate.
This structure allows different parts of a meal to remain visible while helping keep them within the plate. It is particularly well suited to composed dishes, grains, vegetables and other meals that benefit from both an open centre and modest containment.
At approximately 27 centimetres across, Zerka is the principal individual plate within the collection. It can be used by itself or paired with the deeper Zephyr Bowl when a place setting requires two different forms.
The Hout Plate belongs to the same rising-wall family but extends it to a larger, shared scale.
Two long-legged birds face one another across the centre of the Zerka Plate. Black lines define their bodies, legs and decorated wings, while a repeated geometric arrangement moves around the wider border.
The drawing is made by hand rather than transferred from a mechanically repeated pattern. Line thickness, spacing, symmetry and motif placement can therefore change from one plate to another.
Chmissa’s motifs emerge from forms familiar to her through the environment and visual culture surrounding her in Sejnane. Birds and geometric markings belong to this wider vocabulary, but the figures on Zerka should not be assigned a fixed symbolic meaning without evidence from Chmissa herself.
Chmissa personally makes every Zerka Plate in Sejnane.
She learned pottery by watching her mother when she was young. Preparing and shaping clay gradually became something she found herself doing naturally rather than a practice separated into formal lessons.
Her work extends across the complete pottery cycle, from gathering and preparing clay to building, marking, drying and firing the finished object. She usually works outdoors around her home, where materials, unfinished forms, vegetation and family life remain close together.
Her daughter may help when a task becomes physically demanding, while her grandchildren often play nearby as she works. The finished plate remains an individually authored object shaped through Chmissa’s own decisions.
Zerka belongs to the wider women-led pottery tradition of Sejnane. Its form is built directly by hand without continuous rotation on a potter’s wheel.
The object draws on shared regional knowledge of clay preparation, hand-building, surface treatment, drying and fire. That shared knowledge does not make the work anonymous. Its proportions, birds, border and individual variations belong specifically to Chmissa’s practice.
Because Chmissa builds and marks each plate by hand, the Zerka received will not reproduce another example mechanically.
Small differences may appear in diameter, wall profile, rim alignment, motif placement, line thickness and surface tone. These distinctions record the decisions and material conditions involved in making each plate.
Handmade variation is separate from damage. Cracks affecting stability, sharp breaks or damage sustained during delivery should be assessed through Customer Care.
Follow the product’s confirmed use guidance and avoid applying universal assumptions about handmade pottery to heat, appliances or long-term food storage.
Understand Handmade Ceramic Variation
Combine Zerka’s broad individual plate form with a deeper bowl designed for greater containment.
Compare quantities and combinations for building a table gradually around the forms you will use.
See all four plates and bowls personally made by Chmissa.
Explore Artisan Ceramic Tableware