Attica

Brief:

Produce a set of 3 tableware objects

for a restaurant in Melbourne that will

enhance a particular dish from the menu

Tableware. 2019.

Background

Attica is a fine dining degustation restaurant in Ripponlea, Melbourne. It embraces an independent outlook and focuses on overlooked Australian ingredients and mythology of Australia’s past and future. The restaurant ethos appreciates beautiful, rare, and unique produce; informal but still formal dining, and an electric taste in music. Educating the dinner on Australian ingredients, one may not have eaten before. Attica is regarding of one of the best restaurants in the world showcasing this wonderful dining experience.

Owner and chef Ben Shewery embraces aesthetically pleasing design from within his restaurant dining room to the ceramics he uses to stage his food with a strong Australian connection.

Branding and tableware

The three-piece serving vessels are based on a dish from Attica, called ‘Fingerlime and Honey’, which contains three components. The fingerlime has been slow-cooked in its syrup. It is a narrow and skinny lime that when cut in half and squeezed, releases small pearls of citrus from its center. Secondly, it’s the native wild Australian honey that is produced by the stingless sugar bag bees. These bees build hives within trees and rocks in the Australian outback. Their hives are unique in their color and structure. Thirdly is fresh cream added to the dish for its fatty richness.

Photography Ben Shewry. Finger lime in Stingless bee honey.

Development

Inspired by this dish and its ingredients, I have influenced and developed my outlook on this dish. The coral-structured beehive of the sugar bag bee has been my inspiration for the glazing and the shape of my mainpiece is an abstraction of this form.

The coral-structured beehive of the sugarbag bee has been my inspiration for the glazing and the shape of my mainpiece is an abstraction of this form. Seen below is my biggest piece, a sculptural bowl shaped as a donut.