Behind the Design
On The Fiddle
KITCHENWARE INSPIRED BY MARITIME HISTORY
Nautical and military history especially the culinary traditions aboard ships during the era when England’s sailing fleets ruled the seas has become an unexpected source of inspiration for a new product range at Stornish. While exploring maritime archives and naval customs, one detail stood out: the design of the square wooden plates used by sailors.
These practical plates were space-saving by design, stackable and built for use in difficult conditions. What made them particularly distinctive was the raised edge, known as the fiddle. This shallow lip helped keep food from slipping off the plate during rough weather, but it also became a point of tension. When a serving was especially generous and food spilled over onto the fiddle, sailors would grumble. Accusations flew. The cook, it was said, was on the fiddle – distributing larger portions to favourites. Over time, this phrase entered everyday language, now commonly understood to mean someone acting dishonestly.
SAYINGS THAT SAILED INTO EVERYDAY LANGUAGE
In the course of researching this history, I was struck by how many of our everyday phrases can be traced back to life at sea. Many of these expressions, once shouted across decks or logged in ship’s records, now drift quietly through daily conversation. To be under the weather originally referred to unwell sailors sent below deck to recover. When ropes were drawn as tightly as they could go, sailors described them as chock-a-block. The bitter end was the final length of anchor rope fastened to the ship’s bitts – nothing beyond it. Even a slush fund has culinary origins, referring to the fat skimmed from cooking pots, which the cooks collected and sold for personal profit.
It was these historical stories that inspired the On the Fiddle range. A square plate with a functional edge that also became a source of dispute. That edge—the fiddle – became a symbol of boundaries: marking, controlling, and containing.
The first piece in the range is a wooden butter dish, made from offcuts of bamboo set aside from other projects. These small remnants are valuable but often difficult to use efficiently; however, they’re ideal for producing small batches of a compact product like this. Bamboo is warm to the touch, naturally durable, and hygienic—well suited to something used daily in the kitchen. The dish is designed to store butter neatly and to serve it simply, with no fuss and nothing wasted.
