I might not be a huge fan of Delftware but i have to admire the way artists and designers are sexing up the traditional white and blue ceramics. Literally, as in the Dutch Delights ceramic dildos which can be filled with hot water and closed with a cork (by Davy Grosemans and Guido Ooms as part of the Dutch Souvenirs project.) With poetry, as Chinese artist Ni Haifeng did with his fields of ceramic potatoes and Self portrait as a part of the porcelain export history inspired by his life in The Netherlands (via Hinke.) With less subtlety, as Charles Krafft‘s tableware for the end of the world demonstrates.

Or with a technological twist…
Bart van den Berg has just graduated from Delft University of Technology with BlueBrush, a tangible new media tool that helps sales employees at Royal Delft -the company that designs and produces the famous ceramics- in the visualization of Delftware decorations. Decorations can be shown to clients by projecting them in real time and real size on ceramics.

With the tool, clients can get a good impression of how their Delftware product will look if painted and sales employee can formulate a more accurate assignment to the painters, which makes the whole design process more efficient. Users can add three types of input to compositions: images from a usb stick, photos made in real time with a isight camera and text with a keyboard.

The result is a photo from the composition that is projected on a ceramic product. The painter uses this photo as reference to start hand-painting the final product.

Bart van den Berg explained me that the prototype for the tangible control panel consists of Phidgets sensors and some custom built sensors. The control panel contains a joystick to manipulate visual elements, a dial to size images, 4 layers that can contain images, a ring that enables a circular pattern to create the edge of a plate and button to convert colour images to Delft Blue.