Wine&Wood

         The challenge for this custom-made dinner set was the fact it was a gentleman's surprise gift to his spouse. Unlike the previous dinner set orders, I worked based on information rather than energy I felt when meeting and talking to someone. I had the creative freedom and trust I'll make something special. Don't think I felt no pressure. All I was briefed with was to think about a dinning room in a wine region house that will see warm and muted nuances of wood.

         The dinner set is something intimate. I believe that open and direct contact gives me possibility to carefully listen and have a dance-like communication with a client. Well Bojana, not this time.

          Choosing the palette for this dinner set was inspiring and rather challenging. Red wine, soil, grapes, wood. Not my usual palette, for sure. That's why I had several new glazes ordered from abroad which I tested and put together in various combinations until I found the best one. Pushing my creative limits makes me feel fully satisfied and with a notion I approach the task like this professionally. Working on this set was demanding because of its size, many details I had to pay attention to and the overall flow. What  I particularly enjoy is the vibe of the set and its versatility - the plate combination completely changes the vibe. From deep red combos to the white and bronze-gold ones, the look changes revealing its numerous possibilities. The star of the set is definitely a dinner plate - the effective burgundy-bronze glaze that reflects light giving it  rich nuances depending from your point of view. 

This is a 10-person set with 60 porcelain pieces in total. The one person setup consists of:

• white charger plate with platinum rim
• burgundy-bronze dinner plate
• raspberry red dessert plate
• oval bread plate with raspberry red 
• white glazed soup bowl with platinum rim
• bronze gold mini sauce bowl
• linen napkin, custom made by Vilenica.

It took me four months to finish the set. Most of the time is spent in testing with such orders. It was delivered at the very end of 2018 and it was as a gift to the lady for the New Year's Eve. I was very pleased to hear that she loved the gift especially all the details which meant to me a lot!

Knowing that dinner sets make people around the table bring their best out, their best smiles, calmness, festivity, best stories to tell is the most rewarding thing for me both personally as well as a ceramist.

For this photo shoot our host was Nitea showroom and this beautiful Balkan inspired furniture is work of famous Zanat.

photo: Liyle photography