FormaFantasma: Outsmarting Dishes

(zuzana dobrovolná) Intuition, feeling, curiosity – a fabulous combination – this is FormaFantasma. I have no idea whether FormaFantasma was inspired by The Dog and the Cat Tale by Karel Čapek when designing a dining set by means of anything they could lay their hands on. However, the resemblance to Čapek’s story is probably just coincidental.

The Baked dining set was presented by the designer duo of FormaFantasma at the Dutch Design Week this year as part of an exhibition with the collective theme of “getting lost”. The collection is inspired by the culture of the Sicilian town of Salemi where people used flour-based material for architectural decorations. “Our project is a homage to bread and flour,” says FormaFantasma, a.k.a. Andre Trimarchi and Simone Farresin. The Two Italian designers live in the Dutch city of Eindhoven where they also studied at the prestigious Design Academy. They chose the only possible way of expressing their respect to bakers, cooking, and the overall appreciation of everyday products such as bakery products – they became bakers for a while. Thus, the initially simply outlined dishes lead us to the world of concepts and fairy-tales thanks to the selected intuitive process and material.

FormaFantasma found a background for their work on the Baked set primarily in the kitchen, where they played with unusual designer materials, such as flour, coffee, cocoa, spinach, and paprika, which they mixed with salt, shellac, and spices to make the set more durable. Thus, products with pure shapes were created from extraordinary natural materials thanks to intuition, curiosity, and freedom without the necessity of achieving a desired result. Moreover, the dishes are artfully framed with an elastic belt that enables the user to attach bakery products or biscuits to them and offer new possibilities for decorations on a dining set.

However, this project does not end with the exhibition at the Dutch Design Week. FormaFantasma keeps on searching for the right recipe for an entire set and its lasting quality. This fairy tale, baked in intuition, continues towards a perfect future.

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