Column

from Tableware International May June 2022

Trend lilac

Tableware Trend Analyst

Donna Ferrari

Donna Ferrari has worked in magazine publishing for over thirty years. As a consumer magazine editor she specialised in the tableware, homeware and bridal markets, and styled and produced stories related to bridal gift registry, wedding reception design and at-home entertaining. Personally, she has eleven different sets of dinnerware and closets dedicated just to tabletop accessories; she says she loves not ever having to set her table the same way twice.

Anthropologie

In the spotlight

Trend-watching columnist Donna Ferrari shines a spotlight on some of the latest tableware trends: new-fashioned gold designs, modish monochrome and kaleidoscopic palettes, the fresh fancy for florals, and the FaceTime-esque riffs for tabletop. Moreover, the trend many of the new patterns share in traversing worldwide cultures and tributes to Mother Earth…

ibride

Pip Studio

Making faces

Expressive visages, portrayed in prints, drawings, and sculpturally, are among the newest trends in imagery used on tableware.

At first glance the faces make artful designs but looking closer they silently hint to the stories behind their countenances.

From ibride, the Parnasse tableware collection, a name tracing to ancient Greece, and designed by Rachel Convers, contemplates statues in parks that, in time, are reclaimed by nature. Ginori 1735’s Il Viaggio Di Nettuno sea of tableware and decorative accent pieces, created in collaboration with artist Luke Edward Hall, reflect his fascination with characters from Greco-Roman mythology. Pip Studio’s Heritage collection, conceived by the brand’s founder Anke van der Endt —nicknamed Pip, is decorated with a montage of picturesque images that combine to illustrate the story of her parent’s courtship in two different lands — Indonesia and Netherlands. From

Serax, the Face plate is one of the many choices of lively, colour-rich, mixable patterns in the Feast

Tableware by Ottolenghi collection, imagined by guru vegetarian chef, Yotam Ottolenghi, with artist Ivo Bisignano. Carrol Boyes’s animates her Sketchbook tableware with the group of portraits she’s created — like this one tagged, Eye-for-Detail.

Anthropologie helps face the day with its sculpturally modernistic Aoife tea or coffee mug. Rosenthal meets Versace’s new Medusa Amplified collection places the legendary face center stage — available in four colourways.

Carrol Boyes

Ginori 1735

Stone Lain

Kate Spade

Black with white

HAM

Ever since the Jazz-Age when Coco Chanel’s little black dress turned black from the colour of somber to a sensation, it has been the go-to choice for designers intent on creating sophisticated designs, in flawless taste, with timeless cred. Mixed with white makes the ne plus ultra monochrome duet.

Waterford

Sieger by Fürstenberg’s Grand Cru Gold series of wine and digestif cups, are available in glossy or matt satin white, and in the Black Curl design shown here. The curved bases of the cups touch the table at only one point which allows them to be spun or sway to mesmerizing effect. The freehand style black on white drawings for Kate Spade New York’s Garden Doodle pattern make it a charmer. With a minimum of effort no colour says edgy, elegance and allure like black. At Waterford the Lismore Black drinkware and home décor collection’s deep, dark, opaque black contrasted with dazzling clear cuts makes a provocative statement in crystal.

Capdeco’s Lido flatware, modeled in black with flecks of white, is just as chic as the jet set beach by the same name. For her brand, HAM, Joanna Ham’s scores of classic black silhouette designs on her dishware and giftware depict the daily activities, adventures, and life’s simple pleasures as enjoyed by her protagonist, Rabbit. The plate shown is named Cake Loving Rabbit. Stone Lain’s Sophie Rustic Black and White pattern’s monochrome black and white, and classic linen weave design give it a transitional quality that suit both town and country.

Sieger by Fürstenberg

Multicolour

Vista Alegre One cannot refute the ongoing trend for tableware with handcraft looks in natural and neutral colours. In contrast, we see fashion runways this season bursting with kaleidoscopic colour galore.

Fendi, Ralph Lauren, Burberry, on and on with the top fashion brands it is all about big colours, loud pastels, writ large profusions of mega-shades. In step with that trend, we see a variety of fashionable homewares sporting their own parade of big, bright, and multi-coloured palettes.

Porland

Porland’s Morocco porcelain collection, with its half-dozen main motifs, and as many vivid colours, reference the country’s traditional designs, used over the centuries and still popular worldwide, for carpets, handmade crafts and décor. Lenox’s LX Remix 4-piece accent plate set is a bridge between the brand’s past, and ideas for the present. From vintage Lenox the set’s decorative border is based on the brand’s iconic Westchester vase motif from 1915, while the four vibrant colours are used to enrich the set with a modern twist. Kate Spade New York’s new Make It Pop collection presents a parti-coloured set of cups and sauces true to the label’s youthful, upbeat style. Shown here are what will, in future, be all six colours and cuts available in Waterford’s Winter Wonders Mastercraft flute series. The collection’s concept releases one limited-edition glass per year — having started in 2021 and through to 2026. The range of colours and special cuts on each Lenox of the year’s flute are designed to be evocative of the earth’s wintertime beauty. At Vista Alegre the porcelain Futurismo tableware and home accent collection fuses colour with powerful geometric shapes and lines to reimagine the early 20th Century art movement coined Futurism — an artistic and social movement interested in expressing the dynamism and energy of the modern world. Kate Spade

Degrenne

Freshly minted golds

Iconoclastic — in a good way, designers are breaking with the past and using gold on tableware in newly forged, state-of-the-art ways. The result, gold accented tableware with a neutral demeanor at home with any backdrop.

Royal Crown Derby’s Riviera Dream’s dashing design of interlocking gold rings brings a new beat to a traditional dinnerware pattern. Beatriz Ball New Orleans’s Sierra Modern tableware line includes a new addition — African Baskets. Inspired by the traditional baskets woven by the Tonga women of Africa this sustainable, dishwasher-safe, artisan made, sand-cast metal line is offered in four sizes, and in metallic finishes of Gold, Rose Gold and Gunmetal. By design, the choice of speckled gold for the clover motif on Degrenne’s Trefle Precieux pattern gives a playful informality to the application of a precious metal.

While at KitchenN Milano, the weathered and worn look of its Aida bone china’s gold finish offers the type of relaxed appeal as the dernier cri for faded and distressed fabrics and furnishings. Haviland’s newest creation, the Stanislas pattern, takes inspiration from the gilded wrought iron gates standing in Place Stanislas — one of France’s most historic and sumptuous town squares. The classical decoration of acanthus leaves and peonies contrasted by the modernising influence of the grooves carved into the Limoges porcelain body take this lush pattern from strictly formal to broadly eclectic in style. The range is available in tableware, vases, candle holders and giftables, and in gold or grey blue.

Haviland

Floriculture

In the latest trend cycle the one that is hottest is called throwback. This present day nostalgia for designs romantic to retro, and fandom for objects emulating the look of inherited pieces, are cumulatively advancing the renewed fancy for florals. But like so much else today — with a pivot.

The dinnerware in Villeroy & Boch’s new Rose Garden collection reboots romantic roses from laid-back to standouts in strikingly scaled up poses. Juliska’s Field of Flowers Chambray design meets up in matching flatware, napkins, placemats and melamine dinnerware. At Rosenthal the Grand Air pattern, designed by Regula Stüdli, shows a medley of wild flowers, edible blossoms and fragrant herbs tossed freely in windblown sprays. The 35 assorted pieces designed to intermix in Sieger by Fürstenberg’s My China! Paraiso collection embrace a diversity of cultures alongside nature’s provision of plants with its mash-up of motifs including those of Asian peonies, Mallorcan weave patterns, Portuguese-style tile designs, wide-ranging exotic plants, plus the brand’s own signature decorative elements.

For Vista Alegre’s Treasures collection the designer, Brunno Jahara, united man-made geometric designs like those on banknotes, coins and stamps with examples of nature’s plant species — all derived from different countries around the world. Sum total a design crossroads of global influences for our intercultural planet.