Designer Thomas Feichtner was commissioned by Laufen, one of the world’s largest producers of ceramic sanitary ware, to design bathroom accessories. Feichtner’s 5,000-piece limited edition consisting of three items—a cup, a bowl, and a soap dish—is meant exclusively for friends and customers of the company. This set has now been manufactured from Laufen’s revolutionary SaphirKeramik®: an extremely strong ceramic material that permits strictly rational shapes and straight lines, and hence the realization of designs that possess an almost graphical visual presence. The process used to produce these small bathroom accessories is identical with that used for the company’s comparatively larger washbasins. Though this set is hand-molded and fired at over 1000° C, it is thin to an extent that only porcelain would otherwise permit—an innovative quality of SaphirKeramik that enabled Feichtner to produce novel products. His designs here are derived from the projection of two hexagons. These result in constructions of surfaces and edges, allowing the cup, for example, to provide space for up to three toothbrushes without the brushes being able to touch each other. The little bowl, on the other hand, can be used to deposit rings or necklaces. The cup can also, of course, be repurposed to hold writing implements, and the bowls can likewise store small office items. These designs thus embody an interface, so to speak, between the wet and the dry, between permanently installed fixtures and mobile ceramic objects.
