As centuries of still-life paintings suggest, a bowl of fruit is a timeless way to decorate a room. Putting your bodega-bought apples or clementines in a small bowl on your countertop will brighten even the drabbest of kitchens, and a large decorative bowl filled with a bounty of seasonal produce on your dining table will up the ambiance of your next dinner party without setting you too far back (especially if you can eat the stuff once the party is over). But, as with fresh flowers, the downside of decorating with fruit is that it doesn’t last, whether you eat it or not. So it can be an expensive habit to maintain.
That’s why, if you like the look, decorative stone fruits — not peaches or plums or other fruits with “stone” pits, but sculptures of fruit made out of natural materials like alabaster or finer porcelain — are arguably the best (and most ecofriendly) way to get the fruit-as-décor aesthetic year-round. You can pay a lot for hand-painted, extremely lifelike stone fruits at shops like John Derian, but it turns out you can also scoop up some surprisingly realistic (and more affordable) pieces on Amazon, too. The assortment below features staples like pears, a peach, and a banana — buy one or two and toss them into your current fruit bowl to make it appear a bit more bountiful, or get a few to start your own fledgling stone-fruit collection. (If you’re ready to go all in, there’s a set of six that just needs a bowl to become instant dining-room décor). And any would make for a delightfully unusual paperweight at the office. It’s worth noting that all of the stone fruits in our list come with free shipping but aren’t available via Prime — which seems appropriate because sometimes you have to wait a bit longer before you’re able to pick the perfect (and perfectly ripe-looking) pear.
Okay, these are plastic. But if you’re going to go plastic for anything, I’ve found red grapes are the best fruit for it because real ones generally look waxier than their green cousins, which means fake ones made of plastic don’t stand out as much as other plastic fruits — especially when surrounded by other, more realistic stone fruits.
With a red apple, a green apple, and an orange, this set of six features three unique fruits (in addition to a green pear, a lemon, and a peach). Plus, it costs slightly less than buying six individual fruits.
Some bowls for your stone fruit
The cool tones of this bowl from our roundup of the best jadeite things you can buy on Amazon would nicely complement the more vibrantly colored fruits.
I keep my stone fruits in a blue-and-white marbled bowl like this. It’s definitely a more eclectic choice, but there’s something visually appealing in the way the white and blue contrast with the fruits’ greens, yellows, reds, and oranges.
You can never go wrong with wood, especially if you’re going for a more classic look.
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