E.A.T (Edited Aesthetics of Taste)

Designer: James Lowley

Master of Arts in Product Design, OsloMet

Playing with food

The Lento cutlery from E.A.T. (Edited Aesthetics of Taste) is several things all at once. To start, it is exceptionally beautiful cutlery produced in beechwood and designed with reverence and taste (pun intended). Secondly, it is not cutlery at all, but a sort of meditative way to play with food. Thirdly, it is clever commentary on our relationship to food as a consumer product.

Panel remarks

According to the designer, Lento is all about how materials, senses and time affect our relationship to food in a society in which convenience generally outweighs health, enjoyment and sustainability, so that we end up eating unhealthy, tasteless food on the go or in front of a screen. The cutlery is not intended to replace traditional cutlery, but to be a ‘spice’ used for special meals to stimulate conversation and reflection, while at the same time experiencing food in a new and deeper way.

Lento was developed together with chefs and is strongly impacted by the ideas of such people as Juhani Pallasmaa, Bruno Munari and Yuriko Saito, as well as the book The Futurist Cookbook. It has been tested in both formal and informal settings and has been received positively by ‘foodies’. Whether and when it will be found in ‘every home’ cannot be said, but it is a strong and unique expression in the growing global awareness of what and how we eat and there is every reason to honour the designer for a clean-cut, intelligent design product that both challenges and inspires.