London-based Jo Davda has always been inspired by the way food brings people together. Her ceramic work, cultivated at Wimbledon College of Arts where she studied fine art painting, is a direct response to this infatuation. To enhance the dining experience, she sought to create items that are “beautiful and handmade but functional,” she says. “Part of [my pleasure with] eating was to eat off something that was made almost like a [meal] is made in the kitchen,” she explains.
Davda launched her studio, Brickett Davda, in 1992, employing her artistic touch to an array of tableware sets and individual pieces. “There’s a whole surface quality, which, as a painter, is interesting to me,” she says. While establishing her firm, she crafted a line of large serving dishes that would come to define her style, later expanding to other kitchen and dining needs. “I look at colors in ingredients and the way food interacts with certain colors,” citing how the greenish-gray color of slate contrasts the orange in a butternut squash or the red in a tomato. At Spring Restaurant in London, for instance, the owner wanted to eliminate all plastic, so Davda crafted a series of one-scoop ice cream bowls in various colors that complement the vivid flavors.
Her latest pieces include an oversized, nearly 20-inch in diameter bowl based on the idea of presentation and sharing, while a series of vases made out of black matte clay and a centerpiece water jug add to her sculptural collection of objects. At the same time, she’s branching out, with lampshades made out of ceramic earthenware developed alongside tableware and mugs for the UK’s network of cancer drop-in hospitals, Maggie’s Centres, in an effort “to make the ambiance a calm place for people to go and feel supported,” she says.
It’s Davda’s emotional connection to her pieces that now motivates her. “It’s not a math production by any means,” she says. “I consider them as one-offs because each piece is touched by hand, painted by hand, and finished by hand.”
