If I held a tea party it wouldn’t be just any old affair.
Vintage tea sets would spill out over delicate lace tablecloths with silver sugar tongs and gold teaspoons catching the chandelier’s twinkling light. And the sugar bowls. Oh the sugar bowls. They’d have dainty snug fitting lids that chimed if you closed them too hastily. Petit four and crustless smoked salmon sandwiches piled high on cake stands with care and attention.
Then you would see it.
At the centre of the table I would want Kafkanistan a beautifully iridescent tower of teacups, babies heads and tableware. Pearlescent glazes accented with gold are enough to make any mad hatters tea-party dreamer wet themselves. Brand new they each look like someone broke into Wedgwood on acid, but regained a meticulous ability to produce faultless ceramic monstrosities. Each of the pieces hold candles that with use and age the more magic the stalactites of melted wax make them. Dripping in the debris of past gatherings they take on a much more ornamental quality of handcrafted pieces where no side is symmetrical and no two the same. Perhaps I am biased because they fondly remind me of the wonderful talking tableware in The Little Mermaid, or perhaps it’s just my passion for afternoon tea that pulls at my heartstrings every time I think about owning this piece. Or maybe it is just the fact it is, for some, such a covetable object that manages to push so many of the regular ideals of Milan design week straight out the window.
Text: Emily McGeevor