With Line-up, Dutch designer Annebet Philips, known for her playful, hand-drawn design language, brings a new kind of serveware to Belgian design brand Serax. Following her sculptural Carte Blanche collection, Line-up moves in a different direction: lighter, faster, more direct. Platters and bowls hover between the flat world of the sketch and the physical world of the table, their edges traced by thick brushstrokes in vivid blue, a modern rereading of Delft Blue stripped of ornament and recast as a bold contemporary gesture.
Philips is known for a design language that is as precise as it is playful. Graduating in Industrial Design Engineering from TU Delft, she combines rigorous technical skill with an almost cartoon-like visual wit. Her signature: archetypal forms, the kind that live in collective memory, given a sudden, surprising twist.
Line-up is Philips’ second collaboration with Serax, following Carte Blanche, a collection defined by sculptural presence and bold form. Line-up moves in a different direction. Where Carte Blanche departs from mass and weight, Line-up starts from a quick sketch on paper: the intuitive contour. Philips was determined not to smooth it out or perfect it. The liveliness of that original gesture had to survive the journey from drawing to ceramic.
“I’m interested in capturing the speed of a sketch,” says Philips. “A few brushstrokes that catch an archetypal form, just right, immediately, without thinking too much. That’s what I wanted to translate into ceramic: the freedom, the lightness, the directness of that first gesture.”