Good news, Americans, soon you can eat your favorite local dish in a plate that is shaped like your state.
Kaitlyn and Ryan Lawless of Corbé Company took to Kickstarter this summer with an idea for an ambitious project: they wanted to create an 8 foot by 4 foot map of the United States made of interlocking porcelain plates shaped like states.
The Fifty United Plates started with a $17,000 funding goal on Kickstarter, but ultimately reached $75,540 when the funding period ended in August 2013. The money will go toward a large-capacity kiln, a slip mixer and CNC routing, which will be used to produce the plates.
The plates are designed digitally and shaped by a router, which will recreate each state’s precise contours and allow the plates to fit together seamlessly. Once they’re complete, the plates will be part of an exhibition highlighting “community, craft and small-scale American manufacturing.” The creators also want to throw a huge dinner party with the set, featuring a local dish from each of the states.
The designers explain their Fifty United Plates this way:
Because we are all locals somewhere… We hail from the Midwest and live and love in the Pacific Northwest. We’ve felt ties and responsibility to a community, shared work and it’s rewards with friends, toiled in kitchens for family holidays, and built our lives knowing the places we’ve been and the people we’ve known there will resonate through all we do. These plates are for those people – their neighborhoods, villages, towns, cities, regions, states, countries – their homes.
Kaitlyn and Ryan Lawless of the Corbé Company are well on their way to achieving their goal of creating, “well-crafted ceramics that are relevant in their applications, timeless in their style and rooted in a balance between technology and craft, form and function.”
A breakdown of the Washington State plate
Michigan State plates
Washington State strawberry-rhubarb pie
The Fifty United Plates by Kaitlyn and Ryan Lawless of Corbé Company
Visit Corbé Company
Visit the Fifty United Plates Kickstarter page
the strawberry-rhubarb pie may be my” taste” in art. just kidding but it did make me think of HARRYS ROAD HOUSE.