Martha Stewart Swears By This Old-School Kitchen Tool

While there's always something new to get excited about in the world of cookware and kitchen design, a few classics will never be beaten. Celebrity chefs all have their own old-school favorite kitchen tools, but Martha Stewart's choice is particularly notable. It delivers both style and practicality (we wouldn't expect anything less, of course). The longtime television host swears by antique crocks to keep her cookery organized, using them to store everything from wooden spoons to rolling pins. Crocks are basically jars made of clay or stoneware rather than glass, and they come in a wide variety of sizes. Originally, they were storage containers for everything from butter to pickled vegetables. They're built to be durable, reusable, and easy to clean. Placing a couple of them on your cook surface will make it easy to grab the tools you use most often. If space is at a premium, they also free up precious inches in drawers and cabinets. 

The old-fashioned receptacles were such a common storage solution throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries that they're a mainstay at antique stores and estate sales. If you want to invest a little money in your olden canister collection, you can also find beautiful versions of these vessels at auction, where they often sell for as little as a couple of hundred dollars. As with all thrifted finds, discovering the perfect piece is part of the fun, and the right old-school crock brings warmth, life, and history to a kitchen.

Crocks aren't the only practical way to add a little pizzazz to your kitchen. Many essential cooking tools can be beautiful as well as useful, while also becoming part of the decor. Dutch ovens are a great example of this. Our list of the 10 best is full of bold, beautiful options, from colorful, enameled Le Creusets to elegant, hand-crafted hammered copper ones. They look more like a piece of art than the pot you make your pasta sauce in. Other dual-purpose kitchen essentials include wooden cutting boards, which can be left out on your prep surface or kept casually on a rack, as well as hanging wooden spoons, colanders, and more. These can easily be displayed on a pegboard wall, or hung from hooks.

Martha Stewart is a big proponent of this kind of practical, DIY decor. Not only does she swear by crocks, but her farm kitchen in New York is something of an Aladdin's cave of antique storage solutions and interesting cookware. From antique salt sellers and glass cake stands covering countertops to copper funnels hung on walls, the entertainer understands that sometimes a busy kitchen is a beautiful kitchen. As she's lucky enough to have chickens, the legendary cook even uses vintage bowls displaying the day's multicolored lay as part of her scullery styling. The only rule with this kind of cookhouse-dressing is that there are no rules, so have fun making your clutter beautiful!