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I’ve had this project in mind for several years but wasn’t sure what to use for the base and lid of the Parmesan dishes. Once I realized that circles could be punched out of sheets of aluminum, I bought a metal punch to create these round disks. The challenge was in making the cutout for the spoon. The solution was to first trace the circle onto the aluminum. Next, I lined it up and punched out two overlapping 1/8″ circles at the edge. From there, I could punch out the full-size circle. The small cutouts left a jagged edge, but that was easy to smooth out using a small metal file. (I only needed three dishes, since there are three tables in the osteria, but I made four pairs of disks, just to have an extra set as a backup.)

My idea for the glass dish came several years ago, when my son started bringing home boba tea. The clear straw was the perfect diameter, so I had him snag me an extra straw. The challenge here, and probably the most frustrating part of this entire project, was slicing even, level sections. Using scissors didn’t work well, since they bent the straw and it was hard to cut evenly. That’s when I thought to use my sharpest tissue blade and my small miter box. This worked better, but since there was some wiggle room in the miter box slot, it was still extremely difficult to make the cuts straight.

For the handle and vertical posts, I used 18-gauge silver wire. The lever on the back above the handle was cut from a small piece of aluminum and filed to round over the top edge. The spoons are part of a silverware set I bought online. For the cheese, I used a mix of Premo polymer clay in ecru, cadmium yellow, white, and translucent. After baking a small log of this, I grated it with the smallest holes of an actual cheese grater.

Here are the three Parmesan dishes awaiting customers.

I’ll likely keep a couple of the Parmesan dishes on the shelves behind the bar counter, along with some wine glasses, salt and pepper shakers, a jar of silverware, and some knickknacks.