It isn’t every day that you can admire a piece in a museum and then use it to eat your dinner later that night. But the artist of this dinnerware set, Eddie Dominguez, strives for both artistry and functionality in his pieces. While these pieces look like a tromp l’oeil painting or a sculptural installation...

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue,” warns a proverbial inscription on a knife blade imagined by Francesco Salviati. Knife handles further illustrate the tongue’s pleasures and perils, and these sensuous yet violent scenes seem to caution diners about to indulge. On one handle, a figure risks a snakebite to reach into...

Eva Zeisel’s Town and Country line for Minnesota’s Red Wing Potteries, Inc. is an icon of the twentieth-century table. Available in several colors, Town and Country reveals many things—from Zeisel’s unique biomorphic forms, to the emergence of informal dining during the 1940s, to foreshadowing the “atomic” look of tableware in the 1950s. These salt and...

Geometry has always been a friend of the dinner table. During the 18th century both the hexagon and octagon were part of the repertoire of shapes used for plates, teapots, and other dining accoutrements in Europe, as seen in these English Queen Anne style silver salts dating from 1717 and this Chinese export armorial plate...

2003 National Design Award winner Lella Vignelli passed away December 21, 2016. In honor of her memory, we are sharing an Object of the Day blog post from earlier this year dedicated to her design philosophy. Lella Vignelli has spent a lifetime as a designer examining the ongoing expressions of pure, modern form. Working in...

The September 1934 issue of The Pottery Gazette and Glass Trade Review features a full-page color advertisement devoted to “Casino” by Royal Doulton. This modern shape debuted a few years earlier and came in three patterns: “Marquis,” “Radiance,” and “Envoy.” Pictured in the advertisement is the earthenware tureen seen here in the museum’s collection. Decorated...

Covered with Franz von Zülow’s idiosyncratic decoration, this cake serving plate (part of a breakfast set in the Cooper Hewitt’s collection) demonstrates the Viennese artist and designer’s interest in fantasy and fairy tales. Knights on horseback move through a medieval village in the foreground, accompanied by a lively figure blowing a trumpet. The movement of...

In the early 1890s science teacher Emily Healey was working in her laboratory in Washington D.C. when she accidently dropped a certain uranium salt into some heavy oil. When she fired this compound onto a scrap of china, the effect was a brilliantly colored surface. Many experiments with the uranium followed and Emily determined that...

Functionalism is the idea that form should follow function; objects should be designed simply, honestly, and directly. [1] It should be immediately clear to a viewer and a user what the object is and how to use it. Functionalist objects are primarily domestic objects, which makes this milk jug an example of Functionalism in inter-war...