The Love In Bloom porcelain flower vase is shaped like a realistic human heart, complete with ventricles, atria, and arteries. Made by Seletti and available on Amazon (affiliate link), the heart measures approximately 4″ x 7″ x 10″, making it bigger than mine, and significantly larger than the Grinch’s. That’s something. Something I’m not 100% convinced I want sitting on the foyer table to great me when I come home. An ice cream cake, absolutely.
The heart features multiple vein and artery holes to place stems in to create a beautiful, albeit somewhat macabre display. I can’t tell if my wife would think it was sweet or think I was weird if I gave her one. I guess there’s only one way to find out! One I’m still not sure I’m willing to pay for to find out.
Hey, different strokes for different folks. Maybe you’re in desperate need of a realistic heart flower vase, I’m not here to judge. I’m just here to…wait, what am I here for? God – I demand answers!
German artist Evelyn Bracklow paints tiny, realistic black ants on vintage porcelain, making the pieces appear to be crawling with the insects. Why exactly, I’m not sure, but they certainly make for an interesting conversation piece. Or my wife screaming we’ve got ants in the house and breaking a piece of expensive dinnerware with a thrown shoe.
Evelyn makes some of her pieces available for sale through her Etsy shop, but they’re not cheap. So if you fancy yourself an artist, you might want to consider buying some used dinnerware from the thrift store and try painting your own. That’s what I did, and let’s just say maybe Evelyn’s prices aren’t so unreasonable after all.
I love whimsical objects, and these certainly fit the bill. The hardest part is going to be convincing my wife to let me spend $360 on an antsy teapot when I don’t even drink tea. Now I’m not trying to sound too hoity-toity here, but I’ve always been more of a grape soda kind of guy.
Architect André Fu’s new Art Deco Collection features handcrafted homeware and furnishings inspired by ornate Art Deco silhouettes and the serenity of traditional Japanese Zen Gardens.
Inspired by the opulent style of Art Deco and the Zen gardens of Kyoto, modern architect André Fu designed a new collection of homeware he calls the Art Deco Garden Collection. Comprised of cabinets, armchairs, dining chairs, tables, room dividers, porcelain tableware, and wallcoverings, the Art Deco Garden Collection was designed following an involved research period that looked at many historical Japanese gardens, with an acute focus on the Tofukuji Temple Garden.
In close collaboration with De Gournay, a hand-painted wallpaper and fabric brand, each item that makes up the collection features a variety of formal Art Deco pattern work stylized to evoke the symmetrical and meditative qualities of raked sand found in Japanese Zen Gardens. The porcelain tableware gleam in white and are adorned with gilded gold line patterns hand-painted on each piece–the paintwork is so delicate, each brushstroke is visible and unique to the tableware. The room dividers and wallcoverings made from silk paper also feature silver and gold, hand-painted line patterns whose glittering finishes and laborious tracing pay homage to the gilded age of Art Deco and the sensuous fluidity of Japanese gardens.
Fu felt compelled to curate this collection of porcelain tableware, room dividers, and furniture in part as a means to incorporate the visual composition of nature into handcrafted homeware and furnishings. Reflecting on the collection’s original inspiration, Fu says, “My personal design approach is not just about combining styles together. Rather, it rests on an ability to navigate different cultures and reflect contemporary culture based on the inherent qualities of beauty itself, as opposed to just based on any one style.”
We drink most of our favorite drinks in porcelain/ceramic. Tea, coffee, hot chocolate. They all taste better out of a good old ceramic mug or cup, don’t they? Ceramic has been favored for years for being good at retaining a drink’s temperature for longer, while remaining inert enough to not alter its taste. Their non-porous nature also makes them ridiculously easy to clean too… so here’s my question. Why are most thermoses and flasks made out of metal instead?
Metal flasks may be easy to mass-manufacture but storing drinks (especially mildly acidic ones) in metal containers can often alter their taste. It’s basically the same reason why you never drink wine out of a stainless-steel glass… and that should ideally extend to your coffee and tea too. Designed around that very distinction, Kokoro’s thermal flasks come with a porcelain interior, mirroring the very aspects of your at-home drinkware in a closed tumbler that’s easy to carry around with you. Unlike most flasks with chrome-plated metal inner vessels, Kokoro’s interior is made entirely from kaolin-clay-based porcelain. The inert material holds all sorts of beverages without altering their chemical composition. Porcelain clay can withstand extreme temperatures without expanding or contracting like metal, and most importantly, porcelain is incredibly easy to clean under running water, given how microscopic its pores are. That also means the Kokoro flask will never end up smelling like chicken soup because of that one time you decided to drink it out of a travel thermos.
The flask comes with a stainless-steel outer body that’s resistant to damage but fitted on the inside is the porcelain inner-vessel using a BPA-free fastener. This means you can easily clean the porcelain vessel or even replace it if something were to ever happen to your flask. The high-quality porcelain’s physical properties make it perfect for any sort of beverage – it keeps drinks hot for over 8 hours, and cold for a full 12 hours. Designed sustainably, the Kokoro flasks are assembled using physical fixtures (there’s zero glue used in the process) and can be unassembled and reassembled if you ever want to replace parts or clean the entire flask top to bottom. Each flask comes with an air-tight lid that uses a silicone gasket to seal the flask and an integrated handle to carry it around, along with a detachable porcelain strainer that lets you brew tea right within the thermal or infuse fruits into your water. The Kokoro is available across two sizes, a regular (440ml) and a large (550ml), and sports a variety of colors, including some pretty nifty looking print variants… perfect for a summer day, whether it’s indoors or out!
The Kokoro is a stain and smell free thermal flask. With an interior made of replaceable 100% Fine Porcelain, keeping beverages hot or cold for over 8 hours.
Suitable for All Kinds of Beverages
Some beverages are not suitable to be placed in stainless steel flask. Common issues are metallic taste, change of smell or aroma of beverages and metal leaching.
Stainless steel thermal flask can leach chemical to acidic beverages, and will stain when used for long period of time. Iron, chromium and nickel were all found to leach into both alkaline and acidic foods and beverages such as coffee, tea, citrus juice, milk and many more. However, with porcelain interior, the Kokoro is 100% BPA Free and free from metal, chemical leachings.
Porcelain preserves your beverages authentic taste.
Naturally Easy to Clean
Porcelain are made from kaolin clay and fired at temperatures as high as 2,600°F. This makes porcelain pores extremely fine, making it easy to clean and prevent any stain and smell to linger on it.
Say Goodbye to Coffee Stains
What is the main difference between porcelain and ceramic? The difference is the size of surface pores. Ceramic has relatively larger pores compared to porcelain, resulting in stain might still occur in common ceramic. Which will not happen in porcelain.
No Peeling Off
Ceramic coatings is only a coating, it might peel off and having the risk of peel off residues to be consumed. The Kokoro interior is made of 100% Solid Fine Porcelain.
Replaceable Porcelain Interior
In addition of all, if something unfortunate happened and the porcelain is damaged, it is replaceable. Making Kokoro the most sustainable porcelain thermal flask.
100% Chemical Free
Using their Japan patented unique construction design, Kokoro’s assembly method is free from any chemical and metal leaching.
Integrated Porcelain Strainer
Kokoro’s porcelain tea strainer design allows users to drink tea without the mess. It is suitable to be used for loose tea as well.
Built-in Handle
It comes with a built-in handle. Making it easy to be carried and mobile.
Leak Proof Silicone Cover
Made of 100% baby safe silicone material. Able to withstand heat for up to 237°F / 113°C.
100% Leak Proof
Double Wall Insulation
Kokoro’s exterior is made out of 304 high-grade stainless steel with double wall insulation feature. It is able to keep your beverages hot for up to 8 hours and cold for up to 12 hours.
Durable Exterior Finishing
Kokoro’s exterior is extra durable with its stone finishing.
A Gold Winner of the German Design Award this year, the Plisago side tables by Studio Besau-Marguerre showcase an unusual choice of material coupled with an aesthetic that isn’t common to the material either. It’s a confusingly attractive combination that makes your eyes question what they’re seeing before your hands touch them to confirm your guess, while you, all along, admire its strange beauty. The Plisago side tables come made from porcelain, a material that’s completely alien to the domain of furniture. The table also comes with a design that gives it the appearance of fabric. Multiple seams and folds adorn the side of the table, with their own imperfections, generated by a special parametric software. Its tactile, textile appearance gives it the feeling of tightly stretched, lightweight fabric, until you rest your fingers against it, only to feel the cold touch of porcelain. It seems unbelievable at first, but the designers at Studio Besau-Marguerre did manage to cast a porcelain model as big as this, something that requires technique, know-how, and a great degree of confidence and risk. The fact that the designers succeeded in pulling this off is an award-winning feat in itself, while the tense-fabric-like unconventional form of the Plisago certainly merits its own awards too!
Stormtroopers seem to break pretty easily, so it only makes sense that you’d make one out of porcelain, right? That’s exactly what artist Erifyli Tsavdari of Keramiki has done here with this cool desktop sculpture, inspired by the iconic white Stormtrooper’s helmet.
The porcelain Stormtrooper helmet measures about 8.5″ tall and features a textured floral pattern that’s common in porcelain work. Inside, there’s a socket for a light bulb, which casts a warm glow through the translucent clay helmet. I imagine that the rest of the porcelain Stormtrooper was shattered by Rebel blaster fire, and that’s why all we have left is this helmet.
Each lamp is handmade, so it’s likely to have some imperfections, which only seems appropriate for a Stormtrooper. Keramiki also has some sweet ceramic Darth Vader mugs if coffee is more your cup of tea.
For over fifty years, Cedit – Ceramiche d’Italia has been renowned for material experimentation and stylistic research that have revolutionized ceramics. Working with many notable architects, designers and artists of the from different generations, they look to the future with these stunning original interior looks presented at 2016 Milan Salone Internazionale del Mobile, each with its own unique interpretation of the ceramic material.
Barbara Brondi & Marco Rainò | BRH+ (pictured above) define a collection that explores the texture of cement, obtained through different components mixture and superficial finishes. Defined by a wide spectrum of modular combinations between the single elements, enriching the slabs’ range with graphic patterns created by linear engravings, then grouted in stark hues, according to geometries derived by the patterns of handmade embroideries typical of the Italian tradition.
Franco Guerzoni transfers on large surfaces the painting style that identifies his body of work, achieving flat slabs characterized by articulate backgrounds, with movement obtained by superimposing and subtracting delicate matters and thick and fragmented pigmentations.
Giorgia Zanellato & Daniele Bortotto | Studio Zanellato Bortotto draw a sequence of visions inspired by the texture of different plastered walls, selected according to the different degree of wear and exposure to the corrosive elements, dictated by the stratification of substances, which are true to the time and tell the memories and the reflections of a given environmental context.
Giorgio Griffa gives breath to intense, calligraphic brush strokes, making his work recognizable, giving continuity to the definition of a visual code revealed by a sequence of expressive marks in which the chromatic component, watery and soft in its frequencies, gains a defining value.
Marco Casamonti | Archea Associati codes new chromatic color ranges to reveal the shining and iridescence typical of the metallic surfaces, by fixing in a precise moment the different stages of the metal’ passivation.
Matteo Nunziati interprets the surfaces of the textile yarn, making a specific reference to the fabrics decorated with stylized drawings, giving the ceramic surface new perspectives in terms of perceptive output and an unprecedented tactile experience.
German artist Evelyn Bracklow has an interesting take on what she considers compelling dishware: she’s created a line of porcelain dishes with dozens of carefully hand-painted ants all over them. At a glance, they look pretty real. Here’s her reasoning for it:
“Fear, disgust, fascination and admiration: this very interplay of feelings constitutes the charm of the work. Furthermore, to me, the ants symbolize all the stories that any formerly discarded piece of porcelain carries with it. Where one once dined and drank, today ants bustle in ever new formations, every single one applied with a great love for detail.”
Yeah… the art-speak is a little over our heads, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that her creations are quite unique and could make a cool purchase for anyone with a slightly twisted sense of aesthetic. Pieces start at around $250 on her Etsy store.
Take your seasoning literally with the Pinch and Dash Salt and Pepper Shaker Set. These hand shaped porcelain shakers will let you add a “pinch” or a “dash” or salt and pepper. It’s just like having “Thing” from the Addams family at your kitchen table (hot tip: don’t let Cousin It do the cooking, he always gets hair in the food). Measures about 3.25″ by 2.25″ each. I’ve got to hand it to this one, it’s really got it’s finger on the pulse of design.
Have your next meal really take off with this Flying Saucer Bowl. One side is just a standard white porcelain soup bowl but the bottom side comes from outer space. Just soup-er. This UFO doesn’t fly, so don’t try to throw the bowl. Ok, technically it would fly, but the bowl would break. No, not if you threw it into a box of packing peanuts, stop getting technical buddy.
