Wooden Sliced Eggplant Play Food – Hand-Painted Ash Wood Vegetable

About the Eggplant

We cook it as a vegetable, but botanically the eggplant is a berry – a relative of the tomato and the potato in the nightshade family. It is called aubergine in Britain and brinjal in India, where it has been grown for thousands of years. The English name comes from the 18th century, when the varieties grown in Europe were small, white or yellow and looked remarkably like eggs.

Cut one open and the surprise is inside: soft, pale flesh dotted with tiny seeds under the glossy purple skin.

Complete the market with the Sliced Pepper, the Half-Sliced Vegetable Play Set or the Wooden Vegetable Play Set, and keep everything together in the Wooden Box for Fruits and Vegetables.

Height × Width × Depth: 11.0 × 4.6 × 2.2 cm (4.3 × 1.8 × 0.9 in)

All pieces are shaped from solid ash wood and hand-sanded to a smooth finish with no sharp edges. They are hand-painted with water-based paints and finished with olive oil, which protects the wood against moisture. No plastics, no solvent-based finishes, no MDF, no veneers. Made in conformity with the European toy safety standard EN 71. Small variations in colour and grain are a natural part of handmade production, not defects.

A real vegetable, opened up for small hands.

Play food is one of the easiest ways for children to learn the names, colours and shapes of real food. A sliced eggplant goes one step further: it shows what is inside, so children can compare skin and flesh, talk about seeds and connect the toy to the vegetable they see at the market or on their plate.

Inspired by Montessori and Waldorf principles, the eggplant is painted to look like the real thing, with no batteries, sounds or buttons. In a play kitchen or a pretend shop, the child decides what to cook, buy or sell.

Solid ash is dense and hard-wearing, and every piece is sanded and painted by hand in our workshop in Romania. Vegetable by vegetable, the play kitchen grows with the child and lasts long enough to be passed on.