Quick Design Piece: Food from Home
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During a Friday lecture, I am currently doing a degree in Ceramic Design at Central Saint Martins, we split into small groups and each spoke about a potent food memory we have relating to the food of our homes. Something evocative for us.
After listening to each story, we chose one to design an object around.
I chose Allan’s memory. He told a joyful story of making Chinese buns for his host family in LA. It went a bit wrong — well actually quite wrong. The buns were odd shapes and sizes, way too large, not like his mothers at all, but they all ate them & found it very funny.
I liked the energy of the story, the intention behind a gesture of cooking something for someone despite being out of one’s depth, persevering with great humour and sharing an experience of home through food.
I thought of the artefact I was researching from the V&A & the distinctive shape of buns in terms of form.
The artefact is very old, smiling and mysterious from an area traversed by the Silk Road, a trade route rich with exchange of ideas & cultures. Places with trade, with foreigners are the interesting to me. Where people and ideas rub up against each other, there is a fruitful friction. The smile on the artefact is a contented, pleasurable one. Like a smile after a nice meal shared with friends. Smiles are a universal language. Buns are wonderful fat, comforting things.
I designed a tray specifically for occasions when we feed someone food from our home.
Elevated on ‘bun feet’ and with a ring of the smiling artefact faces around it. A fun and functional object celebrating the joy of getting to know each other and world we live in through feeding one another.