In the ceramic industry, it’s usual to ‘glue’ an ear to a cup with slip clay before firing. Starting from this reality a modular system was worked out, reducing the amount of moulds, for making virtually anything you like.For Black Gold there are only five shapes: a narrow cilinder, a medium cilinder, a big cilinder, a corner and a ‘plunger’.
With these five elements tulip vases, coffee pots, five armed candleholders, chandeliers and so on can be ‘glued’. A kind of ceramic LEGO is the result.
All the shapes are tuned so that they can be used in different ways: a narrow tube has an inside diameter appropriate for candles and outside diameter to be used for grips.This modular project is cast in black porcelain. The black pigment weakens the already ‘deformation-sensitive’ porcelain, making this project tecnically quite amazing.
The porcelain, being black however, intensifies the graphic, pictogram-nature of the objects.During her three months work period at the European Ceramics Work Centre ‘modular porcelain’ was Ineke Hans’ major project on the theme of reproduction.
She made a huge collection of items then which were made once: Black Gold Originals. After a few year parts of the Black Gold project were taken in production.
production: INEKEHANS|collection
Runner Up Rotterdam Design Prize 2003
photo's 5-8: Ron Steemers