Espresso Cups
My role:
Product designer, Glaze engineer
My responsibilities:
Led form development, glaze design, mold design, and production planning for a scalable ceramic product line.
Project Overview
In 2023 I co-founded Studio FraJas, a ceramic design brand focused on developing contemporary tableware through color, pattern, and material exploration.
The studio’s debut launch introduced a collection of espresso cups and saucers, establishing the brand’s visual language while validating its approach to small-batch production and market positioning.
Challenge
Ceramic remains the go-to material for espresso lovers because of its heat retention, neutral taste, and feeling of authenticity.
This project focuses on refining proportion, ergonomics, and surface to adapt a timeless material to contemporary form, color, and use.
Objectives
Create a distinctive design that can be iterated with unique patterns and glazes to reach a broad audience.
Develop fabrication processes to produce at scale for wholesale market.
Opportunity
How might we...
Infuse the espresso tradition with playful, accessible beauty to express le joie de vivre in the modern coffee experience?
Solution
Our family of espresso cups comes in 5 styles: 2 collectors editions and 3 monochrome sets.
Linked by a “master” form, customizable glaze options enabled a single manufacturing process to scale across markets.
Market Analysis
Contemporary espresso cups largely fall into familiar categories: handmade, craft-oriented ceramics; decorative, luxury chinaware; or industrial alternatives. Within this landscape, there is a clear want from consumers seeking both a daily functional object and an elegant ritual piece.
Sketching
From testing different espresso cups, I noticed that the handle is often too small to be easily held with one hand. I thought a handle on both sides would help stabilize the cup and invite the user to drink with more intention and delight.
To explore different forms of delight and intimacy, I also wanted a design that could be functional either with handles or no handles.
Prototyping
For a trained potter, throwing off the wheel is often the best way to prototype forms with radial symmetry.
Selected Design
CMF design
After the final prototype, quickly visualized color combinations in Photoshop. This grounded the surface designs in a physical understanding of pattern and proportion.
I tested several glaze variations to meet our goal of elegance, durability, and reproducibility.
Our selected glaze palette was inspired by precious gemstones like emerald, jade, and sapphire.
I then fine tuned the recipes through rounds of multinomial testing to achieve the perfect hue and surface quality.
Color Studies
Glaze Palette
Jade
Sapphire
Emerald
Glaze Tests
Manufacturing design
The cup was designed for an easy one-part plaster mold, while the saucer required two parts to ensure consistent thickness.
Impact
A savvy technical approach allowed us to launch the Studio FraJas brand with 30 unique designs, based on 9 masters. All products were capable of mass production for the wholesale market. Our unique aesthetic has enabled us to partner with several retailers and interior designers in NYC.
