When the food at a fine dining restaurant is described as art on a plate most likely, the plate is art in itself, as in recent years, chefs have taken to bespoke tableware as the vessels for their gourmet creations. Chef André Chiang, for one, handcrafted ceramic ornaments for his now-defunct Restaurant André in Singapore, and he turned to the professionals such as husband-and-wife ceramicists Loh Lik Kian and Debbie Ng when it came to tableware.
“Our tableware serves as canvases for the chef’s plating, much like the blank canvases for the artist to paint on,” enthuses Loh, whose interest in ceramics began when he chanced upon a unique Japanese teapot more than two decades ago. “I was mesmerised by its ‘natural beauty’ wood-fired with just the raw clay body, with a glaze pattern reminiscent of a string of fired straw, and an imperfect handle.”