Cheese deserves a proper surface. The Maud Flowers Round Cheese Board gives it one, a round of dense, high-fired hard ceramic designed in Italy by VIETRI and hand painted in Portugal with a loose floral motif that frames whatever you set on top. The round shape invites people to circle it, which is exactly what you want from a board that sits out while everyone talks and the evening stops being about the food. It is freezer, microwave and oven safe as well, so it can chill before the cheeses go on or warm a round of bread, and when the evening ends it goes into the dishwasher. Maud borrows the bright graphic sense of the Greek Isles, and this piece carries it onto an appetizer table set on ordinary nights, not only special ones.