Designer Moisés Hernández has created a set of simple, monochrome tableware for the most highly rated restaurant in Mexico.
Hernández created the EO tableware set for Pujol, the highest ranking Mexico eatery in The World's 50 Best Restaurants list, which has just moved to a new larger home in Mexico City.
The brief from restaurant founder Enrique Olvera was for bowls, plates and cups that are "clean, comfortable and useful".
Hernández's response was a handmade 20-piece set, with pieces enamelled in either black and white. They feature details based on pottery from Oaxaca – a southwest Mexico state where numerous examples of prehistoric ceramics have been discovered – including softly curling handles and spouts.
"The food at Pujol is shaped by a long period of experimentation and knowledge, so they need proper canvases for those experiences," said the Mexico City-based designer."The tableware has to be as unique as the food served."
To produce the collection, Hernández worked with a pottery factory in Puebla that dates back almost 200 years, and specialises in Talavera – which can only be made in specific parts of the country, and often features hand-painted patterns.
This led to a hand-painted black line being added to the edges of some of the plates.
"The hand-made painting was a detail I wanted to preserve, but it had to be as neutral as possible to have a nice dialogue between it and the chef's food," the designer told Dezeen.
"We decided to have just a single and powerful line on the edge of some plates to show its craftsmanship origin. Each line is unique and beautifully imperfect. Every piece of the tableware also has a small hand-painted dot as a mark of a hand-made product."
Pujol first launched in Mexico City 17 years ago, and its menu combines Mexican street food with haute cuisine. Founder Olvera is also behind popular New York restaurant Cosme.
"All the elements serve as a blank canvas for the contemporary Mexican food experience Olvera offers," concluded Hernández.
Hernández set up his Mexico City-based studio in 2014, after becoming the first Mexican to receive a masters in product design from ECAL, in Switzerland.
His brand Diario, which he founded in 2013, redesigns everyday Mexican objects, and earlier this year Hernández created a set of dip-dyed wooden birds with tropical plumage.