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Designers Stefanie Hering, master ceramicist and owner of Hering Berlin, and César Giraldo, owner of LA-based interior design firm César Giraldo Design, began their collaboration in 2024, co-creating "Waves and Clouds," a new porcelain collection for Hering Berlin.
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Hering Berlin head designer Stefanie Hering is often inspired by the desires and needs of top chefs to create objects that go on to become signature pieces in their own right. One of the most important of these catalysts is Christian Jürgens, one of the leading German chefs in recent years. His restaurant Überfahrt at the Althoff Seehotel Überfahrt by Lake Tegernsee has been awarded three Michelin stars and an incredible 19.5 Gault Millau points. "What I particularly appreciate about Stefanie Hering is her love of experimentation and openness to new developments in porcelain," says Christian Jürgens. “She brings great beauty and aesthetics to dining culture – something that's not always a matter of course, since in high-end gastronomy, designs must also be highly functional above all. Stefanie Hering's creations are the best of both worlds!”
Christian Jürgens' cuisine reaches the highest international level while retaining a connection to the region. His style is based on classic German and French cuisine with a new, lighter twist. Every creation served at the Überfahrt restaurant is a dazzling surprise that brings a twinkle to the eyes of diners. Though the dishes are beautiful, the taste is always what it's all about. It is the be all and end all. It alone reveals to guests why these dishes are served here - because this is the only place they fit. This is his way of showing connection to the region. It goes far beyond just using regional products.
Christian Jürgens wanted the Hering Berlin porcelain his creations were served on to be likewise puristic yet special. On the one hand, the question of the perfect presentation was at the heart of the exchange between Christian Jürgens and head designer Stefanie Hering; the search for a solution that would accentuate sorbets as they were served culminated in the development of the foot bowls that are now typical for many Hering Berlin collections. On the other hand, he wanted the diversity of surfaces that characterise Überfahrt's interior design to be reflected in porcelain as well. So he used elements from various Hering Berlin collections that emphasised the contrast between the velvety surface of hand-polished bisque and the reflective shine of glazed porcelain.
Cups and jugs with large areas of silver plating were also created, including the almost sculptural-looking teapot from the Polite Silver collection. In such designs, the aspiration of these two creative minds to diversity in purism reaches new heights. “I’m a pragmatist,” says Christian Jürgens, “but I also love beauty. Every day in my restaurant, Stefanie Hering's silver teapot shows me how the highest aesthetic standards can go hand in hand with great functionality in porcelain.”
Christian Jürgens continues: "Cielo is also one of my favourite collections: these hand-perforated plates with their tiny holes exemplify an incredibly delicate aesthetic, while being robust at the same time. This makes them unique in the wide world of dining culture." This ongoing mutual inspiration between a 3-star chef and an award-winning porcelain designer has resulted not only in spectacular table settings for guests at the Überfahrt restaurant by Lake Tegernsee, but also in joint projects, such as those planned for 2021 in collaboration with kitchen equipment pioneer Gaggenau, beginning in Milan and later expanding worldwide. This will give international connoisseurs the chance to enjoy this unique symbiosis as well at gourmet events.
Aroma virtuoso Michael Kempf has been delighting guests to calm FACIL at Potsdamer Platz for 15 years with his light cuisine, which has been carefully composed in color and texture down to the last detail.
For almost as long, the 42-year-old, now decorated with two stars, has been working with Stefanie Hering; the symbiosis of porcelain art and haute cuisine, as only Hering Berlin items allow, is a central element in FACIL’s culinary style.
“Michael Kempf creates his compositions with a specific view to our porcelain design,” says chief designer Stefanie Hering. “The interplay of food and crockery creates a visual, complete work of art. This is an honor for me – as well as a design challenge.” This is strikingly apparent on one of Kempf’s signature dishes, the “Cloud.” The dessert, made of different sized, filled balls of white chocolate, is served on the deep blue presentation surface of a plate from Hering Berlin’s “Blue Silent” collection; only through this does the illusion emerge of a cloud sailing across the sky.
The Pulse, Velvet, Silent Iron and Cielo collections are also used in the bamboo-lined restaurant on the 5th floor of the Mandala Hotel.
Stefanie Hering has a particularly intense collaboration with a star of American creative cuisine: Robert Cortez. The native Texan does not cook in a fixed restaurant, but creates – including during Berlin's Eat Berlin Festival from February 20 to March 1, 2020 at Hering Berlin in Potsdamer Straße – sensational pop-up events at the interface between cuisine and fine art.
Central elements of his indulgence happenings: Courses on porcelain by Hering Berlin, composed like pictures. Cortez serves caramelized chanterelles with truffles and watercress leaves on Silent Iron with its gray-blue, hand-poured glaze.
He drapes braised light and purple endive with caviar, flowers and cheese cream on Velvet with its delicate, rough, hand-cut edge.
An oyster, bedded in crushed ice and filled with caviar, fennel herb and chamomile, finds its perfect backdrop on the brass-colored display surface of Silent Brass.
Illusion's gentle, gold tone, broken by irregular white dots, forms the perfect contrast to the reds and oranges of arctic char roe with tiny beetroots and blackcurrant sauce.
On Cortez's dinner tables, Hering Berlin's plates are definitively relieved of a purely framing function. The creative chef raises the dialogue between porcelain and food to an art form. "I am thrilled each time anew," says Cortez, "working with these wonderful plates by Stefanie Hering."
