Paper Made Tableware

Karambole - paper made tableware

Karambole is a design project of mine I did in university. The way of approaching material and a creative idea by starting to work with the material paper instead of thinking and sketching first was very unnusual for me, but I learned a lot and I can only recommend it to you craftrs out their. Sometimes it's better to start testing the material first and sketch your experiences later on :)

So here we go - paper made tableware

by Kion Designs

Starting to get to know the material I soon went for the technique of unregular folding!
The surface created by this technique is very pleasing to me It's nice to look at and also to touch.
Afterwards I tried bending folded pieces of paper. This is a bit tricky, because using normal paper from your printer it's ok to bend it into a tube. The paper will adapt to it, but using thicker and stronger material, you will see the 'inner curve' starts to undulate! :(
Therefore I started cutting striped of thick paper, folding them only once and layered them around an round object. This way I still gained the wanted look, but using an easier way of crafting.

Pic 1: inspiration for 'folded paper'.

Pic 2-4: some sketches of mine done after trying the technique of bending and folding. The ideas of cups, bowls, plates and a lamp started to get real.

Using a regual cup(no handle) and a bigger vase as solid platforms to craft around them. All paper stripes need to be prepared with glue:

50% paste - 50% wood glue

This combinations makes sure to have a very strong and concret paper maché model after it is all dry again!!

The plate is not wraped, but plat and added with the unregular folded paper.

Here is the finished paper made tableware.

I also created knife, fork and spoon + tablecloth.

The tablecloth was a fun thing to do considering folding a hugh piece of paper and then sewing it at the very sides :)

Although the projects idea was to start with paper I went further and tried to transport my models into porcelain!

Pic1: Creating a negativ form (cement) from a papermodel

Pic2: paper model removed - it's shape is visible on the inside of the cement blog.

Pic3: Filling in liquid porcelain up to the top. The cement will slowly take the water from the porcelain and so it sets from outside to inside.

Pic4: After having a thick enough wall for the model I outpoured the rest of liquid porcelain back into its container. The model needs to dry a bit now. It will shrink so you'll be able to remove it from the cement block negativ form.

Pic5: Some cups and bowls made from porcelain before burning process)