Abstract
“My guests do not realize it, but they enjoy the food because of the vessels they are served in”; “If I serve food in this handmade bowl, it will be eaten all up.” This paper discusses the fusion between the aesthetics of professionally handmade pottery and the food served in it. It is based on a multimodal discourse analysis activated on lingual narratives and the interaction with objects of 10 persistent consumers, primarily women. The analysis shows that they genuinely believe that the enjoyment from the meal has to do with the particular handmade ware made by a particular maker. They can suggest connections between the aesthetics of the bowls and the food served in them. Owners of pottery-ware find the maker’s personality as inseparable from the object’s aesthetics. They believe the joint aesthetics of food and tableware have power over participants. Users of handmade pottery ware would most likely take pictures of pieces serving food and send them to the makers. The consumers enjoy the secondary creative processes, live performances of selecting, then grouping, and using the objects. When they buy handmade ware as gifts, they would most likely give it with offerings in it. The use of handmade objects at meals enhance the consumers’ self-experience as authentic and unique. This aesthetic experience involves a sense of ‘existential authenticity,’ theorized in anthropology studies.
Presenters
Orly NezerCoordinator, The International Programs Office, The David Yellin College for Education, Israel
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Existential-Authenticity, Food aesthetics, Moral tableware, Serving love
