In recent years I have been seeing more and more attention being paid to the details of table décor design. As someone who likes to entertain, I’m a great believer in the importance of the right décor design for the table, one that emanates a pleasant, relaxed atmosphere over everyone seated around it. This is certainly true when it comes to Rosh Hashanah – the festival of renewal, the festival that symbolizes the beginning of a new year, that arouses thoughts and hopes for the coming year. A festival, actually a whole month, that prompts us, the secular among us as well, to ponder, to take stock, to close our eyes and give our blessing. To give our blessing for what has been, for what we aspire to, and wish for ourselves going forward.
This is how TISHREY was conceived – a Rosh Hashanah plate as a central design element on the holiday table, which gives the stage to the holiday blessings.
I’d like to invite you to dive into my mind.
The words and concepts that guided and led me to the final design were…
Plating, flow, movement, air, changing, clean, festiveness, simplicity, culinary, Judaism, traditional text, list, circles, (air) bubbles, blessings.
I imagined a visually clean plate that gives the stage to the food that symbolizes the holiday blessings.
The material used to make the plate is renewed Corian, which of course stems from the studio’s general outlook. From a deeper perspective, we too, as human beings, endeavour to undergo a process of renewal ahead of the new year, and the analogy with Corian, which undergoes a process of renewal in our studio, fits beautifully.
The wonderful properties of Corian resulted in clean, natural lines, and the festiveness and simplicity I was aiming for.
From a culinary perspective, I was interested in seeing how a product can invite a different plating style compared to a very traditional plate and serving style. It was important to me to create a series of depressions of varying sizes, and to enable users to create their own style of arranging the symbols of the blessings.
The text is the result of choosing a traditional serif font, which we encounter in the Haggadah and the Bible, and inscribing it in the form of an organized, linear “shopping list”, which gives it a more modern quality.
All these, together, led to the final design of the TISHREY plate.
And on that festive note, I’d like to wish us all a year of good, of sweetness,
A year of boundless happiness and love,
A year of conquering summits, even the highest ones…
A year of achievements and successes,
A year of fulfilling dreams, even the most farfetched ones…
A year of renewal, blossoming, and growth…
And most important of all, as mothers and grandmothers always say – good health!
So, I’m joining them in wishing us all a year of good health.
Shanah Tova,
Avital