Our thing of the month June is the sugar bowl from the series ‘Five Senses’ designed by Barbara Schmidt for the porcelain manufactory Kahla.
The bulbous box is made of white porcelain and is closed with an elongated, rounded lid that tapers upwards. In the eyes of the US distribution partners, this form was clearly too phallic and the sugar bowl was ‘castrated’ for the US market with an alternative, flat lid.
Is it the sugar bowl per se that can be read as obscene or pornographic, or are such attributions contextual? You’d better find out. Two copies of this sugar bowl can be seen in the Museum der Dinge until October 1, 2018 as part of the special exhibition “Eroticism of Things“.
