HOME TRUTHS: A Dutch Designer's Edible Tiles

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When you mention the word "tile" to most people, ceramic tiles, Italian porcelains, or Moorish mosaics come to mind. For Katja Gruijters, a Dutch food designer, tiles are works of art that have flavor, smell, sound, and color.

For "Tasting Lace: An Edible Lace High Tea," an event held January 29 at New York City's Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), Gruijters baked 60 of her colorful, delicious squares with lace designs, which she calls Ander Kant, for a group of guests. Presented together as a patchwork installation, the roughly 17 cm pieces came in a variety of types, including chocolate, genoise, sugar, and shortbread, and in a host of flavors, such as kiwi, lemon, cinnamon, apple, and raspberry.

The process of making, breaking, and then consuming the tiles is "a new ritual," says Gruijters. People are afraid to interact with art, let alone destroy something that is beautiful, she explains. She loves to watch the range of facial expressions of the participants as they splinter the tiles with sculpture tools, or cut off sections with a knife. Once you take part in this experience, she says, you'll "never look at lace in the same way." Nor will I ever look at tiles in the same way, either.

Gruijters' Ander Kant are featured in the exhibit "Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting," on view at MAD through June 17. Chocolate and sugar tiles are also for sale at the museum gift shop for $15 to $28 each.

- Susan Weiman, Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief