Fulfill A Sweet Tooth With Studio Yellowdot's Creations

September 24, 2024

Words: Peter Webster

Like Hansel and Gretel discovering the gingerbread house, visitors at last September’s Maison&Objet trade show in Paris were enchanted by Turkish workshop Gorbon Ceramics’ booth, which looked good enough to eat. On display was Patisserie—a Ladurée-worthy collection of ceramic tiles and objects by Studio Yellowdot, inspired by donuts, éclairs, and other delectable baked goods. The studio’s founders, husband-and-wife team Bodin Hon and Dilara Kan Hon, are keen home chefs who often come up with food-related ideas, such as jelly lamps, eggshell screens, and seedpod cabinets, while channeling cultural, artisanal, and technological influences from their respective backgrounds.

Born and educated in Istanbul, Kan Hon studied interior design at Marmara University as a way of harnessing strong artistic impulses before exploring more conceptual approaches in a master’s program at Milan’s Istituto Europeo di Design. She complemented the discipline of academia with time spent in the more instinct-driven environment of handcraft ateliers. “I worked in a puppet studio, for instance,” she recalls, “which gave me a lot of inspiration and freedom.” Intriguingly, her husband’s family is in the toy manufacturing business, and he shares her sense of play. A Chinese American born in Los Angeles and raised in Hong Kong and New Zealand, Hon studied bioengineering at Rice University in Houston, where he also worked at NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center developing next-generation space toilets. Attracted by the creative possibilities of industrial design, he enrolled at IED, where he met Kan Hon.

The couple launched Yellowdot in 2017, its cheery name a tribute to the sun’s life-giving energy. Specializing in product, lighting, furniture, and spatial design, the atelier and creative consultancy has studios in Hong Kong and Istanbul. We talked to the founders about their working methods, recent projects, and upcoming plans.

Bodin Hon: I’m more technical, asking if something is feasible. And I like to invent things, so there’s technology as well. I look at new materials and mechanisms to create different types of surprises.

Dilara Kan Hon: Coming from an art background, I’m interested in spontaneity and being aware of what I’m feeling: I feel like this is the right color, I feel like this is the form we should use. From the start, Bodin would say, “Prove it,” something nobody had really demanded of me before. It was a big challenge, but it taught us both how to discuss our ideas, how to put them together.

BH: We start with sketches or some material, followed by plenty of back-and-forth critiquing until we’re both happy. In the beginning, we did many self-driven projects that could sit around for months until we found the right solution. With clients, we have to be quicker.

DKH: One day we were making jello and realized we could use the same silicone mold for resin, which we’d been experimenting with. We ended up with solid “jellies” that we needed to find a use for. A lamp was the answer. When you touch the metal base, the light dims.

BH: We discovered that used eggshells, washed and set in resin, form a thin, strong, lightweight matrix. The material is translucent, which gave us the idea of developing it into a pendant light. It takes three or four hours to handcraft the circular diffuser, putting the right size eggshells in piece by piece, kind of like baking a pizza.

DKH: I wanted to create something that symbolized my origins, the seeds from which I grew. There’s a traditional handwoven fabric called kutnu from Gaziantep, a town I used to visit as a child. Then, in a Hong Kong park, I saw the bright-pink egg clusters of an apple snail, and I merged them with my cultural seeds in the cabinet, which is covered with 540 handsewn kutnu balls. It’s about 67 inches tall—bigger than me!

BH: The American Hardwood Export Council commissioned “future heirlooms” from seven emerging Turkish designers. There were three woods to choose from; we took cherry and maple. Games like backgammon and chess are very popular here, so we turned a checkerboard into a piece of furniture assembled from CNC-cut solid-wood blocks. There’s a custom set of chessmen, too, so people can enjoy impromptu matches.

DKH: The brief was to present a new collection at Maison&Objet. It was our first time working with ceramic, so visiting the factory with its giant kilns, clay mixing machines, and racks of hot ceramics was special. It was like being in a big bakery where everything looked colorful and yummy. Right there we thought, Why not treat the project as making baked goods for a pastry shop in Paris? In the end, we created a whole confectionery store, all from ceramic.

DKH: We’re working more with eggshell and developing some furniture pieces. Also, we’re designing our wonderful new apartment in a beautiful historic area of Istanbul.

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