Care
How to look after it.
Four short guides, by material. Every piece also carries its own care instructions in the record on its product page, and a printed card repeating them ships in the box.
Stoneware & porcelain
Both are fired high enough to vitrify, which means the body is no longer porous. That is what makes them genuinely dishwasher-safe rather than dishwasher-tolerant, and it is why they need very little looking after.
Do
- Dishwasher on any normal cycle. Load so pieces cannot knock against one another — chips come from contact, not from water.
- Microwave freely. There is no metal in the body or the glaze.
- Conventional oven to 180°C, provided the piece goes into a cold oven and warms with it.
- Wash off tomato, citrus and vinegar within a few hours rather than leaving them overnight.
- Lift grey cutlery marks off a satin glaze with a damp cloth and a little bicarbonate of soda.
Do not
- No freezer, no broiler, no direct flame. Fired clay fails by thermal shock, and the crack is immediate and total.
- Never move a hot piece onto a cold or wet surface, and never run cold water into a hot dish.
- Do not drag a piece across a polished table — the unglazed foot ring is deliberately raw and slightly abrasive.
- Do not hang mugs from hooks by the handle.
Hand-blown glass
The most important paragraph on this page. Our glass is soda-lime, free-blown by mouth. It is not borosilicate and it is not heat-resistant — treating it as though it were is the one reliable way to break it.
Do
- Hand-wash in warm water with a soft brush.
- Dry with a linen cloth rather than air-drying, which spots.
- Stand a carafe upside down on a cloth to drain, so the rim is not resting on metal.
- Lift limescale from a base with a little white vinegar left to stand for an hour.
- Store upright. The rim is the thinnest part of the glass.
Do not
- No hot liquid of any kind — no tea, no coffee, no mulled wine. The glass will crack, and often not immediately.
- No dishwasher. Heat and detergent both dull the surface even when the glass survives.
- No freezer, oven or microwave. Do not chill a glass in the freezer before pouring.
- Do not stack glasses inside one another. They wedge, and separating them is how they break.
Stonewashed linen
Flax is stronger wet than dry and gets softer every time you wash it, so linen is the one material here that improves with use rather than merely surviving it. It creases readily; that is the material, not a fault.
Do
- Machine wash warm, up to 40°C, with like colours.
- Tumble dry low and take it out while very slightly damp — this single step decides how it looks.
- Press on the linen setting with steam while damp, if you want it flat.
- Expect a further 2–3% shrinkage on the first hot wash.
Do not
- No fabric softener. It coats the fibre and destroys the absorbency, which is the only reason to own a linen napkin.
- No bleach and nothing containing optical brighteners — both yellow undyed flax over time.
- Do not wash above 40°C or tumble dry hot. Both cause disproportionate shrinkage and a harsher hand.
- Do not leave candle wax to be dealt with later — lift it when set, then press through brown paper.
Olive wood & unglazed terracotta
Both are porous, and both are ruined by the same thing: water they cannot get rid of. Neither goes anywhere near a dishwasher.
Do
- Wipe olive wood with a damp cloth and dry it immediately.
- Re-oil olive wood with a food-safe oil whenever the surface looks dry or chalky — roughly every couple of months in regular use.
- Wipe unglazed terracotta with a dry cloth only; rinse and dry the glazed interior when you change what is in it.
Do not
- Never put either in a dishwasher, a microwave, an oven or a freezer.
- Do not soak them. A porous body that has taken on water can take days to dry through and may split as it does.
- Keep oil and grease off unglazed terracotta — it absorbs, and the stain is permanent.
- Expect unglazed terracotta to darken where it is handled. That is the material behaving as intended and it cannot be reversed.
If something has gone wrong anyway
Anything that arrives broken is replaced or refunded in full — send a photograph within 14 days and keep the packaging until we reply. See returns and refunds.
hello@oroviatable.com — Monday–Friday, 9:00am–5:00pm PT. Every message answered within one business day.