Koons, Calle, JR, and More Contribute Fancy Plates for Bernardaud's 150th Anniversary

To marks its sesquicentennial, the French manufacturer of high-end luxury porcelain flatware Bernardaud commissioned a group of contemporary artists including Jeff Koons, Sophie Calle, JR and Prune Nourry, Marlène Mocquet, Michael Lin, Marco Brambilla, film auteur-turned-artist David Lynch, and others to create limited edition plates.

Image courtesy Bernardaud, Jeff Koons.

"I have always been intrigued by porcelain, by the material's economic as well as its sexual connotations," says Koons, who contributed a set of plates featuring images of the porcelain sculptures in his "Banality" series. "Porcelain was the material of emperors, but it has been democratized and nowadays anyone can enjoy it. That's why I chose to use this material in the 'Banality' series.

David Lynch, who created a series of 12 plates that, taken together, tell a short narrative -- and retail for €840 -- titled his set "The Boundless Sea." "I said yes to this project because I had never mad plates before," Lynch says. "I have every intention of using these plates every day at home and I can't wait to do so!"

Taking a similarly narrative approach, Sophie Calle wrote a story that unfolds over the course of six plates -- available in English or in French, for €330."What I really enjoyed with these plates was creating a kind of ritual to complicate people's lives and force them to sit in order, to always be six at table, and to never break a plate," Calle said. "There's also a more personal motivation. I enjoy eating out of other people's plates because I always get the impression that what they have is better."

-Benjamin Sutton, BLOUIN ARTINFO

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