Renowned designer takes coveted title at Awards of Excellence
Inspired by the beauty of nature, everyday life and the perfection in imperfection, Marie Michielssen has been designing for Serax for 25 years.
She has created countless objects inspired by, and intended for, everyday life. Marie’s designs are both functional yet aesthetic, thanks to her artisanal approach and choice of soulful materials.
There is a strong focus on functionality, and she works with materials that have ‘soul’, this is in no way at the expense of the aesthetic of her work as each and every one of her designs clearly shows.
La Mère, the first ceramic tableware line of Marie Michielssen, is a loving ode to the (grand-)mother figure and women in general. Marie has a lot of respect for women who, despite all social pressure, remain close to their core and use traits such as intuition, binding force and emotional intelligence in a positive way.
“I often make my “prototypes”, the draft versions of my pieces, from the leftover materials we throw away at Serax. That means I get to work with many different materials and can experiment to my heart’s content. Also, I’ve always had a fascination for paper. As a child, I loved drawing on paper, a love that grew even stronger later, during my degree course in graphic design – we only ever worked on paper in our classes, never digitally. What’s more, you can manipulate paper the way you want; you are the one who determines what the end product will look like and you are not dependent on an instrument to transform the material. Paper is recyclable and a neutral canvas for any paint colour. A seemingly everyday material, and yet, to me, it’s certainly not dull or lacking in variety.”
While her work is structured on one hand, Marie also works intuitively; “I like imperfections both in my work and in people… those imperfections make things or people very beautiful”.
Some of her collections for Serax include La Mère, Pawn, Earth, Wind & Fire. This incredibly inventive, imaginative, beautifully talented creator is Tableware International’s Designer of the Year 2025.
