Lovisa Wattman turns function into beauty

Posted by Tiffany on June 1st, 2009 Add your comment »

at-the-office-1 Lovisa Wattman in her office with some of her most popular tableware.

Lovisa Wattman loves to cook, so it’s no surprise that her products tend to gravitate towards kitchen and table accessories. Using her own experiences in the kitchen, she looks first at which feature makes an item easier to use, then finds a beautiful way to make that feature a unique and distinctive part of the design.

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The oak parmesan cheese grater is a good example.

Says Lovisa: “I use a lot of parmesan cheese. I wanted a grater for immediate access that I could store a good-sized piece of cheese in and bring straight to the table.”

Like many designers, visual memories and impressions guide much of her work.

For the mug patterns, she took her camera with her on summer vacation. “My husband and I were in Skane in the south of Sweden. I knew I wanted a landscape design for one of the sets and this was the place to find it. Big wide vistas with small groups of houses or trees.”

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Lovisa’s photos of Southern Sweden that inspired the “Skane” pattern on her Thermos mugs.

Lovisa works in glass, stoneware, wood, stainless steel, and concrete, and has designed products for Höganas, Sagaform, Design House Stockholm, and Ikea among others.

design-for-ikea1 photo: IKEA, picture cut
Lovisa’s popular 360+ tableware collection for Ikea.

“I want the way my things look and work to be timeless and lasting,” says Lovisa. “I would rather choose carefully and buy something that I’m willing to care for and live with for a long time. So it’s natural for me to think that way when I’m working too.”

Lovisa attended Stockholm’s prestigious Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in industrial design and was a visiting student at Denmark’s Arkitekturskolan in Århus. She has worked independently as Lovisa Wattman Industridesign since 1999.

Exclusively for the month of June, buy Lovisa’s designs here at from Sthlm shipped quickly and safely from our base in San Francisco!