Knitted Maria Coffeepot by Gijs Bakker

Gijs Bakker
Knitted Maria Coffeepot, 1997

What happens when a formal porcelain coffeepot puts on a knitted jumper? For Knitted Maria (1997), Gijs Bakker wrapped Rosenthal’s classic Maria pot in a cotton cover and coated it with glaze. The textile disappeared inside the kiln, but its knitted texture remained captured on the porcelain.

The design brings two very different worlds together: precise factory production and the familiar warmth of something handmade. Instead of simply printing a pattern onto the pot, Bakker allowed the making process to leave its own decoration behind. The coffeepot is a part of the Centraal Museum Utrecht collection.

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Knitted Maria was created for Droog Design for Rosenthal: Experiments in Porcelain, a 1997 project that invited designers to explore unfamiliar ways of working with the traditional material.