August 2025
As much as kitchen objects are intended to serve our daily livelihood, they are also an asset to reflecting the personality within contemporary design interests. The colour, texture, shape, and material of kitchenware allow both designers and consumers to embrace creativity even in the mundane, internal spaces of domestic life. In this month's social media posts, each week spotlights a different material used in kitchenware across the xDX collection: glazed earthenware, stainless steel, wood, and melamine. Chosen for their use in exploring the potential of colour, texture, and shape, these four materials offer an example of how kitchenware has evolved from the 1950s onwards, contingent on post-World War II changes in marketing and design sensibilities.
Post-war consumerism in the early 1950s garnered a specific visual appeal through bright colourways partnered with open-concept kitchen spaces intended to hold social gatherings. Previously, the kitchen was a separate space with walls to close off the smells, sounds, and sights of what occurs inside, reserving the space for functionality. The bold colouring and welcoming of socialization in a space that has been traditionally associated with domestic labour contrasted with the pre-existing monotony of wartime lifestyles. Advertisers further pushed the idea that household chores of cooking and cleaning resulted in greater satisfaction when done in an attractive atmosphere adorned with modern materials.1 Designers and advertisers continuously combined this love for the new with visual trends, encouraging consumers to take part in the widespread aesthetic of an idealized domestic lifestyle.2
Week one of this month’s posts features designs by Mary Small Einstein Wright, an American designer and sculptor known for collaboration with her husband, Industrial designer Russel Wright, as the two introduced the first groundbreaking American Modern earthenware line in 1939.3 Earthenware is porous and natural, classified as a type of pottery made durable by the glazing process that creates a waterproof exterior and characteristic sheen.4 Designed and manufactured later in 1954, the Las Vegas Dinnerware and Chanticleer Dinnerware glazed earthenware plates unveil the material exploration the 1950s brought to the modern design of everyday objects in the kitchen.
Chanticleer Dinnerware (top) and Las Vegas Dinnerware (bottom) by Russel and Mary Wright.
Photo: Etienne Capacchione, xDX Collection, Carleton University.
Both plates share the same shape with rounded edges and a handmade feel despite the ability to manufacture earthenware on a large scale. The Las Vegas Dinnerware plate presents a speckled white and grey background, offering a texturized but minimalist canvas to accentuate the illustration of three flowers in primary colours yellow, blue, and red. Chanticleer Dinnerware holds an illustration with artistic quirk found in the loose flowing contours of a black, red, green, and yellow rooster. The choice to use glazed earthenware in combination with the painterly designs reveals the designers’ desire to make kitchenware an object of use and artistic value. These plates offer a conversation point that appeals to consumers' fixation with the newest, creative kitchenware items for themselves, their family, and their guests as they congregate in the heart of their homes.
In the final week of this month’s posts, the influence of the 1950s creative materiality has been reinterpreted according to the chic, contemporary aesthetic of the 2000s. Willa Wong’s accessible yet inventive Sonoma Tableware series utilizes melamine plastic, a material choice that embodies the 2000s growing tendency towards convenience made possible by technology. As advancements in manufacturing plastics considered the physical impact of dishwashers, the guaranteed durability and affordability of melamine kitchenware made it a practical choice for the modernized household.
Sonoma Tableware, Yellow Dot Pattern (top) and Sonoma Tableware, Blue Ribbed Pattern (bottom) by Willa Wong.
Photo: Etienne Capacchione, xDX Collection, Carleton University.
The yellow dot pattern and blue ribbed pattern of Wong’s Sonoma Tableware present material adaptation over time by incorporating lighter, simplified melamine in comparison to the glazed earthenware plates by the Wright’s– but the bold blue and pastel yellow recall the introduction of genial colours in the 1950s. From brim to center, the blue ribbed pattern is hypnotizing and artful as it follows the classic circular shape of the plate. On the yellow dot pattern, Wong experimented with the orbit of textural design as the outer edge is dappled with raised bumps fading towards the smooth inner area of the plate. Both patterns offer usability while maintaining the 2000s modern aesthetic.
From strictly serviceable objects to enhanced formations of design sensibilities, the materiality of kitchenware over the past 75 years has acted as a route for innovation and functional artistry in the details of our homes. With anticipation for the xDX Researchspace, taking this month to analyze the historical link between kitchenware objects held at our various institutions has offered insight into the innumerable research possibilities within the xDX data on designers, manufacturers, and materials. To learn more about stainless steel and wood, check out the captions of this month’s social media posts.
Siah McTavish, Public History Placement, York University
Aviva Weizman, Lead RA York University
Jan Hadlaw, xDX Project PI
Footnotes
1. Kathryn Ferry, The 1950s Kitchen (Oxford: Shire Publications, August 20, 2011), 25, https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=-ZbmDQAAQBAJ&pg=GBS.PA24.
2. Kristen Eileen Schulrud, "America through the Kitchen Window: Mid-Twentieth Century American Culture through Kitchen Advertisements, Products and Design" (Master’s thesis, The University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, 2013), 25, https://ezproxy.library.yorku.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/america-through-kitchen-window-mid-twentieth/docview/1373381111/se-2.
3. International Museum of Dinnerware Design, “Dining Grails,” accessed April 14, 2025, https://dinnerwaremuseum.org/main/dining-grails/.
4. Dutch Delftware, “Types of Ceramic: An Overview of Earthenware, Stoneware and Porcelain,” last modified July 17, 2019, https://delftsaardewerk.nl/en/learn/193-types-of-ceramic-an-overview-of-earthenware-stoneware-and-porcelain.