Breakfast Waffle Ornament

From us, and there are fewer of them about than you would expect for such an obvious subject. The reason is the grid. A repeating pattern has to hold its spacing across the entire face, and most manufacturers dodge the problem by softening it into a vague texture. My mother-in-law Constance counted the rows. They were even.

It rarely gets stolen, which in white elephant terms is its own sort of win. Theft goes after the broadly desirable: the bottle, the candle, the thing anybody would take. A waffle is so specific that the room decides within seconds it belongs to whoever opened it, and nobody moves on it. Constance opened one. Nobody moved.

Yes, and it works best for someone who owns a piece of equipment they hardly use and will not discuss getting rid of. That is a very large group of people. Constance owns a waffle iron she has used twice, keeps it because it works and she has the space, and regards disposing of functional objects as a fashion. She is unmovable.

Blown glass with the grid pressed into the form while it is still workable, then hand-painted, with the pat of butter applied separately and set deliberately off center. Pressing the grid rather than painting it is why the wells hold a real shadow. Constance asked why the butter was not centered. Because centered looked wrong. She stopped asking.

It is a true square at 3.35 inches on both sides, which makes it one of the broader pieces here and the only one where the width and the height are the same number. Hang it with the flat face turned out to the room rather than edge-on, or the grid disappears altogether. Constance turned hers within a minute. It had been edge-on.

Store it flat with the gridded face up and nothing stacked on top, since the raised edges between the wells are the first thing to chip under pressure. A shallow divided box beats a deep one. Constance stores hers with the other square things, in a box of square things, which she assembled deliberately. It works perfectly.

Plenty, and one useful way to sort them is by whether the food needs a utensil. Some of the range is cut, forked and eaten sitting down, and some of it is picked up in one hand. Grouping the cutlery pieces together gives a branch a formality that the handheld ones undo. Constance sorts by this, as she sorts by most things. I find it restful.

It ships in protective transit packaging, built to get a flat square of glass through the post without pressure across the face. That is not presentation packaging and you would rewrap it before giving it to anybody. Constance rewrapped hers in paper she had saved, cut precisely to size, with the grain running one way. Of course she did.