Description
In the old pharmacy on the Place Saint-Michel, the shelves still hold rows of white porcelain jars with gilded labels: camomile, valerian, rose petal, gentian. The pharmacist who runs it today is the fourth generation of her family behind the long wooden counter. On quiet afternoons she still grinds dried lavender in her grandfather’s mortar for customers who cannot sleep, and the whole shop fills with the scent of Provence on a warm July evening.
This mortar and pestle celebrates that long tradition of careful hands and healing knowledge. With its gold-finished interior, it suits a pharmacist graduating or retiring, a doctor, a nurse, a herbalist, an aromatherapist or a cook who grinds spices by hand. Display it in a clinic office, on a kitchen shelf beside bottles of herbs, or by the bathroom mirror to hold a few daily pills or a pair of cufflinks.
Inside and out
- An apothecary mortar with its pestle
- Gold-finished interior
- Measures about 1.75″ x 1.75″ x 3″
- From Rochard
- Painted by hand on porcelain, made in Limoges, France
It makes an elegant congratulations on passing pharmacy board exams or opening a new practice. Keen cooks will appreciate the nod to their favorite kitchen tool, the one that turns peppercorns, garlic and basil into something wonderful, while herbalists may keep a pinch of dried lavender inside for its scent.
