Holding a Dinner Party
Dinner Party, designed by Mitre and Mondays (image: Fabian Frinzel).
“Usually it’s a chore to move something around a space, but you can take pleasure in putting your hands in Dinner Party,” explains Finn Thomson, co-founder of design studio Mitre and Mondays. Trough-like, mighty, and acid yellow, the design of Dinner Party, a new ceramic serving dish created by the studio for design platform Atelier100, began with its handles.
Cut low into the sides of its ceramic body, these were inspired by a stone drain found on a street in Marseille. “The drain looked so lovely, I had to put my hand in,” says Thomson. Its comfortable fit – worn smooth by rainwater – was the inviting element that Thomson wanted to build into Dinner Party. “Once you have a handle, you can think about what you want to carry and where.”
Although the conceptual move from drain to tableware may seem eccentric, Dinner Party blurs further typologies even within its function, serving as both dish and tray. This kind of multipurpose approach, says Thomson, comes from the studio’s desire to think about objects and spaces in new ways, and discover unexpected narratives in their designs. “We use culinary language such as ‘delicious’ and ‘smooth’ to talk about design because it’s about opening yourself up to more expansive ways of thinking,” he explains. “That’s part of Dinner Party. The handles prescribe how you should hold it, but we want people to experiment with use.”
The product is manufactured in Portugal and when the team visited the factory producing the work they saw ceramicists holding Dinner Party by the handles as they carried the fired clay. “As soon as we saw that,” says Thomson, “we said that’s how it should be glazed – using the handles.” They landed on a double-dip technique, whereby half the object was dunked in the glaze by one handle and then turned and dunked by the other. The result is a faint lemony line visible in the centre, the point at which the two dips cross. “Subtly,” adds Thomson, “you feel the handles through that line.”
As a result of its unconventional form, the dish is flamboyant as a centrepiece, but still stackable and snug in square kitchen cupboards and compact flats. “Traditionally, round serving plates would be displayed on the wall, but we are interested in how people live now, which is often in a much more temporary way,” says Josef Shanley-Jackson, Mitre and Mondays’ creative director. Freya Bolton, the third member of the studio, adds that the challenge was “finding the fun in common sense”. The playful mix of typologies that make up Dinner Party are, however, most fully brought together through its handles. They reflect the story of its conception, are quietly present in its vibrant colour, and fit with its utilitarian aims. They invite the user to take hold of the dish and all that it represents.
Words Hannah Rashbass
Photograph Fabian Frinzel
This article was originally published in Disegno #37. To buy the issue, or subscribe to the journal, please visit the online shop.