The kitchen is a fertile place for the imagination. Surely a philosophy that Aldo Bakker subscribes to. I’ve just caught some glimpses of a few tableware products he’s designed, all via the NYT. Pictured below is a flat container for olive oil, which you can use to dip your bread with, dragging up the stuff on the vertical surface without needing to get everything soggy.
What’s great about it, is the minimal adorning and the purity of the function. Its simplicity ends up making it just look damn good. You can also check out some other interesting stuff in the website, like a carafe that lays on the side, so dust doesn’t settle on the mouth.
Which also reminded me of all these product ideas that bounce into my head randomly whenever I’m in the kitchen. You can’t leave everything behind I guess. Like a special spoon for laying sauces or particular plates and serving dishes. 99% of porcelain tableware always seems very one dimensional. There’s no height at all. Instead, the food is expected to pile up elegantly. Why not give the food a bit of help, so you could say, suspend a sauce on a transparent, elevated tier.
The role of product/industrial design in the food industry has been long in the making and even the best chefs get input from designers because they provide an outside the box, customer experience sort of thing. If you ate at El Bulli, you’d be able to use some of the things Luki Huber makes. Heston Blumenthal also loves to use these unique pieces that add to the story and magic of a dish. Like a base containing dry ice with bed of fake twigs surrounding a pot above it. Inside, is a scoop of sorbet, which is doused with a flaming dose of whiskey. He also adds a few drops of this essential oil to give a leathery, burning embers, fireside smell to invoke a childhood memory of his.
I think maybe I’m just nostalgic, cos I was probably most happy designing this set of Chinese dishes for a project once. I guess, I wish one day, I’d be able to combine all my favourite loves into one magical situation, thinking at length about all the mystical, philosophical reasons why and how and resolving everything with a cosmic lightbulb going on.
