Eating is at the same time one of life’s most enjoyable and most mundane activities. The gestures tied to it run on rehearsal rather than attention, which is why we so often can finish a meal without remembering it. Relish, a project by Jasmin Özturkkan Menda, is built around this blind spot.
The work is a collection of wearable glass and ceramic objects that reimagines how we eat, shifting attention from taste alone to touch, movement, and interaction. Paying more attention to our meals is a sort of meditation, and changing the gestures around them is a way to feel more connected both to our bodies and to the people we are sharing the meal with.
Relish by Jasmin Özturkkan Menda
The collection
The collection comes with a custom table, which has cutout slots for the tableware to go into. The vessels and glasses are designed to resist being set down, as they have no flat base, so they can either be held in the hand or sit in their slot in the table, forcing the person to pay attention to their objects. The set is designed with no cutlery, food goes directly from the plate into the mouth, aiming to increase awareness in the user’s body. In many different ways, the objects ask for continuous negotiation, attention, and care, turning the meal into a sort of choreography.
The colours of the vessels reference skin tones, from blush pinks to amber to deep browns. Glass and glaze are materials that are usually cold and sterile, but in this case they are pushed towards warmth and flesh. Some of the pieces resemble body parts; no object is neutral, and most of them read as an extension of the person using them.
The return of the senses
The discipline of food design has been trending in recent years, with more and more designers becoming interested in how we can use and influence eating. Today, eating has become frictionless: delivery apps, desk lunches, instant meals. Projects like Relish add friction on purpose as a counter-position, as a reminder to care about one of the most human activities we have in life.
There is also a growing interest in the sensory dimensions of everyday experience. While so much of our attention is directed towards screens, food remains one of the few activities that engages several senses simultaneously. We touch it, smell it, see it, taste it, but often only pay attention to the last one. Relish reverses this hierarchy, making touch and movement just as important as taste.
Designing experience
Ultimately, Relish is interesting because it challenges something we would usually take for granted. Its objects are neither purely functional tableware nor sculptural pieces to be admired, instead, they act as research tools into human behaviour.
The objects we use everyday do more than their practical purposes, they shape our movements, influence our habits, and establish the conditions in which we experience the world. The work is an invitation to reconsider the familiar, to question the designs we decide to surround ourselves with and what they make us do.
Anna Lazzaron
Anna Lazzaron is a designer, writer, and researcher based in Milan and Barcelona, working across material exploration and speculative practices.
