Presented during last Dutch Design Week, DINING TOYS collection designed by Roxanne Brennen is a set of playful and sensual tableware inspired by sexuality that allows us to eat in a different manner. Our brain reacts to the experience of eating through the pleasure centre. It is activated and releases endorphins. It is a basic need influenced by the senses but also experiences enhanced by the loss of control, the discovery and the experimentation of the act. “The tableware that we use creates boundaries and comes along with many rules. Our behaviour on how we eat, what to eat, when to eat it, how to handle the cutlery and interact with others at a table, has been set” Roxanne Brennen stated. “The cutlery, bowls, plates, glasses are tools that have been created with this code of behaviour that is encoded in our society. However, the experience of eating could become stronger along with the reaction we have to it if we could lose this control. We can experience and discover the taste, smell, texture and sound of the food but not the way of eating it anymore. My project gives us the playfulness and discovery we have lost, allowing us to lose control and discover the action of eating again along with the animalistic instincts we have forgotten. Discovery tools to increase the pleasure of the experience the freedom of feeling how we want to act and taste the food.” The collection is made by hand with white stoneware for its plasticity as a material and it’s porcelain-like texture and appearance in a paler range of colours when needed in contrast with stronger ones.The project DINING TOYS by Roxanne Brennen will be on show at London Design Festival till 23.09.2018 and at Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York till 28.10.2018 among over 65 design projects and more than 40 objects and installations to touch, hear, and smell, The Senses: Design Beyond Vision. an inclusive celebration of the sensory richness of design.
