Fuzz by Study O Portable

Wednesday 15 June 2011


London-based design practice Study O Portable created the Fuzz series of bowls by building up layers of coloured ceramic resin over a wax mould. WGSN-homebuildlife spoke to Bernadette Deddens, one of the practice's founders, to find out more about the project.

Study O Portable was set up in 2009 by RCA-trained Dutch designer Bernadette Deddens and Japanese fashion designer Tetsuo Mukai. The studio launched Fuzz at 2010's London Design Festival and have been developing the project since then.


How did you get the idea for the production process, and how did you develop the process?

The process originally came about as a re-appropriation of German Baum Kuchen (tree cake), where cake dough is brushed around a rotating spit in layers to create a ring of baked cake. We first used this method to make bangles. We then moved on to bigger, more complex shapes still using the same outward rotation moulding method.


What dictates the form of the bowls? You seem very interested in geometric forms.

We were interested in the phenomenon of something blurring, or 'fuzzing', as it gets communicated through time and space. We felt that things we are interested in, our influences, are "handed down" before reaching us. To better demonstrate this 'fuzzing', we decided to use geometric shapes. The nice thing is the difference between the inside and the outside. With Fuzz, even the sphere loses its edge.


Where would you like to take the project next?

We like to make things ourselves and not in big quantities, but we are thinking about adapting the method into something more commercially produceable that could exist next to the studio pieces.