Turning the tables with Mirage's new EpicArc series

We understand the potential of ceramics and stoneware. We have been making wondrous ceramic objects for millennia. The advance of civilisations is mapped and understood by what they did with ceramics. You might well imagine then that the functional and decorative possibilities for ceramics have been fully explored and realised. The Italian porcelain stoneware specialist Mirage disagrees and is proving that the creative potential for ceramics is far from exhausted.

Mirage is one of the world's leading, and most innovative, suppliers of porcelain stoneware for exteriors and interiors. It has a 45-year history of creating fine and finely detailed ceramics for floors and facades for everything from airports and shopping centres to private homes. Working with the Italian architect and designer Andrea Boschetti, Mirage is now creating porcelain stoneware with new structural power and purpose.

Ceramics and stoneware, of course, have always been employed as high-quality table and counter tops, creating surfaces that are super-durable, tactile and beautiful. In Mirage's new EpicArc range, the tables, as it were, are turned. Tabletops are glass, ensuring that porcelain stoneware table legs – either elegant curves or starkly geometric three-legged triangular plinths – are visible from all angles.

Boschetti has created two stoneware forms, essentially pyramids and arches, that clearly echo classical forms while being powerfully contemporary in effect. Suddenly tables gain an architectural impact and purity of line, occupying their space in an entirely new way and creating a dramatic focal point for any room.

The range's name compacts ‘epicentre’, as the triangular plinths have been christened – and highlighting the tension they create between delicate balance and rock-solid stability – and ‘arc’, referencing Boschetti’s graceful arches. And the collection, designed for home or office, encompasses an extensive collection of tables, large, small and modular, employing either ‘epicentres’ or ‘arcs’. A collection of coordinating chairs will also soon be available.

With EpicArc, Mirage wanted to create a new design, radical not only in form and execution but also in terms of sustainability. Over the last decade, more and more consumers have become aware that ceramics and stoneware can match strength and durability with subtle detailing. And given the natural materials used, they probably presume ceramic stoneware is inherently sustainable. But Mirage argues that too many products in the sector contain chemicals, glues and materials that are hard to recycle or re-use.

Epicentre and Arc table supports stand tall and stable employing only dry, mainly slot-in mounting. And all materials used in the collection, glass, iron, aluminium, wood as well as ceramics, can be easily recycled once an EpicArc piece becomes unwanted or unloved. Though, given their dramatic appeal and enduring good looks, it’s hard to imagine any kind of such terminal disenchantment.

© Architonic