Fun At The Table: Hvíslustell Gives Dinnerware A Playful Spin

Most of us grew up with grandparents who owned a special set of plates or dinnerware that sat untouched in a cupboard, occasionally dusted off — if we were lucky — for Christmas. My parents took it even further: I’m pretty sure they still have china and cutlery sets they got for their wedding over 30 years ago sitting somewhere in the box in the attic, waiting for that “one special occasion.” But the artists behind a collaborative project Hvíslustell (or Whisperware in English) — believe it doesn’t have to be this way. They want to make dinnerware, above all, fun.

Hvíslustell is a project by five individual artists — fashion designer Berglind Ósk Hlynsdóttir, visual artist Agnes Ársælsdóttir, and product designers Rebekka Ashley Egilsdóttir, Silvía Sif Ólafsdóttir and Sylvía Dröfn Jónsdóttir. Except for Silvía Sif and Sylvía Dröfn, who are both part of the ceramic studio Allsber, the group members each work on separate projects but have shared the same studio space for years. One day they decided it could be fun to do “something cool together.”

An exquisite corpse for the table

“We are so different in what we make and how we work,” says Berglind when I meet her in Hvíslustell’s studio at hafnar.haus. “In the beginning, we were focusing on, or researching, what dinnerware actually is. That fancy dinnerware your grandma has locked in the cabinet and only takes out at Christmas — why is it that you can only use it once a year? We wanted to make a fun dinnerware — something you could also mix with your everyday stuff.”

The group experimented with different items and concepts, often holding dinner parties at each other’s homes to test new ideas in practice. Today, Berglind has set up an impromptu dinner table in the studio to showcase the finished products: whimsical, sculptural glasses, playful bowls and plates, quirky textile napkins, strange toothpicks and even a pack of “inside smokes.”

Alongside sketching individual ideas, the group used the collaborative game “exquisite corpse” to develop their designs. One person would draw a section, fold it up, and hand it off to the next, who’d continue blindly. Looking at their first glass drawings made this way, you see unexpected, colourful lines — each collaborator marked by a different colour, equally contributing to these creations.

“I’d like this to be more of a standard in life — get your friends over and do some drawing.”

Rather than ending up as yet another fancy but bland, mass-produced dinnerware set, these pieces feel alive — their uneven lines and surprising forms somehow finding their way onto the dinner table straight out of a shared sketchbook. “I’d like this to be more of a standard in life — get your friends over and do some drawing,” Berglind laughs, speaking of the playful spirit at the heart of Hvíslustell.

The project first debuted during DesignMarch earlier this year, collaborating with the small downtown restaurant Hosiló on a pop-up where their products were showcased as part of the dining experience.

Drink from both sides

What connects all of the pieces designed as part of Hvíslustell are their natural materials or nature-inspired shapes. The group tried to rely on their own expertise as much as possible — for example, working with clay felt like an obvious choice, since several members are product designers who work with it on a daily basis. For the ceramic plates, the artists even moulded each other’s hands.

When it came to certain materials, though, they had to turn to outside collaborators. “We knew that we could not make glasses ourselves,” admits Berglind. “We had some ideas about how we could do it, but if people are actually going to drink from them, we had to have a professional do it,” she says.

So, they teamed up with Anders Vange, probably the only glassblower based in Reykjavík. They brought their drawings and ideas to his studio in Kjalarnes, stayed for a few trials, and then Anders got to work. He usually works with recycled glass sourced from the window company Íspan — the same material used to create Hvíslustell’s glasses.

All the glasses are double-ended — you can simply flip them upside down to get a completely new glass. A wine glass turns into a shot glass, or whatever else you want it to be. “We wanted to create lots of different ways to use each piece — the glasses can also be dessert bowls, or used for ice cream, cocktails, olives, anything,” says Berglind.

The same repurposed glass from Íspan was used for the plates, which feature spiral shapes created by imprinting clay spirals onto the glass before being fired in the ceramic oven. For the wooden bowls, the artists collaborated with woodturner Örn Ragnarsson, who crafted the bowls based on their designs. Leftover wood was used to create toothpicks, sold in packs of two.

Berglind shows me their “inside smokes” — a pack of candles designed to look like cigarettes, laughing that they were a big hit at the restaurant pop-up. “We wanted to go back to the grandma, grandpa vibe,” she explains, “because at least we all connected with our grandparents having one smoking room at their house. We wanted to pay homage to that, without the smoking smell.”

All of Hvíslustell’s products are unique — no two glasses or plates are the same. They’re available in limited quantities, with small ceramic bowls starting at 12.900 ISK, wooden bowls at 15.900 ISK, large spiral plates and ceramic bowls at 16.900 ISK, inside smokes (a pack of five) for 4.900 ISK, and glasses for 23.900 ISK each.

Hvíslustell’s website is in the making, but in the meantime, all products are available on Instagram: @hvislustell