A pantry that displays everyday ceramics

There was a time we kept the good pieces for someone else's dinner party. Wrapped, at the back of a cupboard, waiting for an occasion that rarely came. There was no pantry yet then, just kitchen cabinets overflowing with half bags of cereal and whatever else didn't have a proper place to be.

Before we built ours, most people here didn't quite understand what we meant by the word. A pantry isn't really a thing the Dutch make much of. The British, on the other hand, have turned it into one of the best rooms in the house, and that's where the idea came from, if I'm honest.

That's changed. Most of our favourite antique ceramics live in the pantry now, out on open shelves, doing the least glamorous work in the house. A bowl holds fruit. A dish holds onions, another garlic. Plates get stacked, pulled down, used, put back. Nothing in there is precious in the way it used to be.

Which is, we think, when a piece actually starts to mean something. An antique kept for best is really just being stored. Used daily, it becomes part of the house rather than a visitor in it.

It's also where the harvest ends up. Garlic hangs to dry there, herbs too, alongside a shelf of cookbooks that never quite fit anywhere else. Underneath, tucked behind a curtain, sits the part nobody photographs: empty jars, rice, pasta, beans, and a freezer that would otherwise have to live somewhere far less convenient. There's a small coffee station in there as well, just enough to make it without giving up an inch of the kitchen counter.

There's a practical side too. Open shelves mean the colour and the texture of old ceramics get to do something in the room, quietly, without anyone deciding to display them on purpose. A pantry is usually the last place anyone thinks to make an effort. It doesn't need much. Even a small mirror in there earns its place, bouncing light into a corner that would otherwise stay dim, making the whole thing feel a little larger than it is.

Small decisions, in a room nobody photographs for the hallway. Once you have one, though, you rather wonder how you managed without it.

We're still working out what else belongs on those shelves.