April 2025

Faye Toogood is surrounded by a cacophony of roses. These are not the dozens of varieties of roses that she grows in her much-loved garden in the English countryside. Instead, the roses around her inhabit a different cosmos: they are swirling and dynamic, abstract and dripping, vividly layered in visceral pinks and infused with a wild-edged freedom – and she is spontaneously hand-painting them, one by one, on to porcelain in a ceramics studio in Nagoya, central Japan.
Toogood is among a handful of creatives, alongside Ed Ng of AB Concept, Marc Newson, Yabu Pushelberg and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, who are reimagining the heritage-steeped world of Noritake, one of Japan’s first modern ceramic tableware makers. Noritake is something of a household name in Japan. Since launching in 1904 and unveiling the country’s first Western-style dinner service a decade later, it has become synonymous with the quality of its decorative white porcelain and bone china tableware. Today, however, the vast majority of its output has diversified into ceramics-related industrial technology, from sake to dentistry.

Noritake’s creative director Yuichiro Hori, the entrepreneurial Nagoya-born founder of Stellar Works furniture, is intent on shifting the world’s creative gaze back to its tableware – as reflected in the Noritake Design Collection. This new series will cast the brand’s richly layered heritage of technology and craftsmanship in a sharp new light at Milan Design Week this year, with a show at Alcova’s Villa Borsani in a space that has been art directed by Toogood. ‘Timeless and handcrafted are key words,’ says Hori. ‘Many processes are more than 100 years old. These designers are from different continents, but they all respect Noritake’s DNA.’

Highlighting Noritake’s qualities of "whiteness, uniformity and sharpness’, Tomoyuki Katada, head of tableware, adds, "By combining the technology we have developed with the sensibilities of world-renowned designers, we hope to create something new and valuable."

Discover full article in Wallpaper Magazine Design Issue May 2025