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Surrealist Ceramics: Exquisite Cups by Chloe Lee Carson

By Ray Hu - November 16, 2012

in Homeware

I bet André Breton himself could not have foreseen the 'consequences' of inventing Exquisite Corpse: four score and seven years after he popularized the collective writing/drawing game, designer Chloe Lee Carson has resurrected the surrealist pastime as a collection of playful tableware.

For her "Exquisite Cups," Carson came up with a total of nine characters—further refined by an illustrator—divided into three sets, which loosely adhere to the themes of "Folk," "Wild," and "City." (The pun is less successful in French, as the game is known as cadavre exquis. C'est la vie.) In homage to the game, each cup "displays different body parts that stack up to form a complete image. Once stacked, they can be twisted to create amazing cross-breed creatures."

The cups are the first product for Carson's newly launched brand, Shlos, which came about from a felicitious turn of events (it's worth mentioning that the game is also known as consequences): after she completed her BA (Hons) at University of the Arts London's Camberwell College, Carson briefly worked for Donna Wilson, who told her about the Observer and Southbank Centre's Boost Design Competition. As one of the winning candidates, Carson had the opportunity to work with Helen Johannessen of Yoyo Ceramics over the past summer, who helped her young charge bring the product to market as of last month... just in time for gift-giving season.