Dune

Overview

Type: Product Collaboration
Year: 2023

Dune borrows its whole attitude from ancient Greek pottery, then adds something entirely of its own moment: a single piece rendered in two finishes at once — matte set against high gloss — so the same ridge catches light two different ways depending on where it falls on that one form. That ridge doesn't stay put: it turns up again in the glassware and flatware, translated into whatever material happens to be holding it. Marble does the anchoring, cut into shapes that could pass for Grecian relics; wood does the loosening up, keeping the whole elemental cast – stone, glass, metal, clay — from taking itself too seriously. The ridge still carries through in the companion glassware, softened into quiet geometry.

Creative Process

No single piece was ever the point here. Dune was built around the whole tablescape, with enough range in material and finish to give a table real depth. Getting the two-tone, matte-and-gloss glaze to hold consistently across a single form took close work with Serax's artisans, since the finish is doing the job pattern usually does: it's the whole reason the ridge reads differently depending on the light.

Creative Direction

Dune ran through both shoots with Marie Wynants, right alongside Zuma: the first stripped for shock (the now-infamous pickle pie), the second tuned toward what the two of them now call a shared language: less confrontation, more intentional surprise. What ties the two together isn't the food, it's a belief: without playfulness, design tends toward precious, sterile, forgettable, and Dune's pieces were treated as props for something a little absurd rather than objects too precious to actually use.

The ridge is the whole idea. Once I had that detail right, everything else — the glassware, the flatware, the serving pieces — just had to know how to speak the same language.

Kelly Wearstler