you are special by Han Decorte from belgium

My research was based on the story “The Three Feathers” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

“Once upon a time there was a king who had three sons, two of whom were clever and intelligent, but the third one did not talk very much, was simple minded, and they gave him the name Simpleton.”

In the story, the three brothers have to do three missions in order to inherit their father’s kingdom. They all believed that Simpleton could never win this contest, but by the end of the story Simpleton not only received the crown and the kingdom but he also won the heart of the girl, all due to his simpleminded honesty.

I used this story pattern, which is common in fairytales, as a starting point for this project. I took normal cups and grafted this idea onto them, because they are iconic objects, which are easily recognizable. I designed 3 normal cups and made one of them a bit unhandy but still worthy of a king’s title. I did this by deforming and glazing them and by giving them extra functions. I made different series of those three cups, two normal one special.

From there I let go of the principle of three cups and one variation in order to pursue ideas I discovered during the process. The ideas and forms could stand on their own without the original story, so I continued the form-finding process for its own sake.

Pourer

For this object I put two of the original cups together to discover a new function. I made a small hole in the surface leading to a spout that encourages you to think of new ways to hold it and to pour. Some of the shapes and glazing of these pourers show the function or the way to pour.

Lemon squeezer /cup

I started by designing a cup with a thickened, exaggerated drinking edge to make it difficult to drink from the cup. Then I altered the shape of the bottom of the cup to allow it to be used as a lemon juicer.