It is a little as though you can really feel the slightly rough, brittle surface of a coral when you hold Ted Muehling’s delicate spoon in your hand. The haptic quality of the bisque porcelain is similar to that of the crustacean. The American designer deliberately underscores this impression by strongly orienting his work, also in formal terms, on a lifelike representation. Only the gleaming white and the glazed inner surface of the spoon bowl indicate that this is a 14-centimetre-long masterpiece of the Nymphenburg Manufactory.
