TOKYO, Japan — Sometimes a design is so evocative it beams a narrative into your head when you first lay eyes on it. When I saw Duncan Shotton’s “Soy Shape” sushi dishes, I was immediately taken to a clean, white apartment located at the top of a tower high above a cyberpunk version of Tokyo. It’s precisely the sort of design you want in your collection if you’re the CEO of an off-planet mining operation or the leader of a megaopolis-spanning crime family.
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You may remember Shotton from way back in the early days of CFile. We profiled his adorable “Plate-Plate” series. Shotton, whose studio is based out of Tokyo, said his mission is to “engage users emotionally, promote happiness and ensure people love what they’re doing, wherever they are and whoever they’re there with.”
You can see, especially when that mission statement is taken in context with “Plate-Plate,” how Shotton is at risk for being overly twee, but “Soy Shape” sidesteps that with mathematical austerity. It’s also clever in that the full breadth of the visual experience is only realized once the dishes are full of sauce. Shotton states that soy sauce has a natural color gradiation. In a shallow dish, it’s semi-opaque. It’s this effect that couples with the dishes to create the illusion of a three dimensional object. The sauce rises from the table in cubes or in an impossible Escher-like triangle.
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The project has a few days left on its Kickstarter and people who donate more than £15 ($19.50) can get their own dish. Shotton, who set the fundraising goal for the project at about $6,600, more than tripled that sum by raising more than $21,500 at the time of this writing.
Another well-done job by Shotton. We look forward to seeing what this designer has for us in the future.
Bill Rodgers is the Managing Editor of cfile.daily.
Do you love or loathe these works of contemporary ceramics? Let us know in the comments.
Photographs courtesy of the designer. Click to see a larger image.
I like it…..