Marije Vogelzang & Proef.

Marije Vogelzang.

Slow Food.

Marshmallow clouds.

Marije Vogelzang is an ‘eating-designer’ who creates food-installations, catering, restaurant concepts and exhibitions all over the world. She is a founder of a catering business / restaurant based in Amsterdam called Proef {which in Dutch means ‘tasting’}.

Marije studied product design at the acclaimed Design Academy Eindhoven but eventually decided to do ‘food design’. Although according to Marije, “food is already perfectly designed by nature. Instead, her designs focus around the verb ‘to eat’. Vogelzang is inspired by the origin of food and the preparation, etiquette, history and culture around it. For this reason, she doesn’t associate as a ‘food designer’, but as the first ‘eating-designer’ in The Netherlands.” {via Proef}

Marije’s designs are highly imaginative and conceptual, experimental, considered, relevant, meaningful, fun, witty and full of love and emotion. {She once said that food is the first thing that a mother gives us with love, and she found this very important.} As a designer Marije explores food through 8 factors: senses, nature, culture, society, technique, psychology, science and action.

Images via When Eating a Wolf.

Necklaces made out of sliced carrots, sandwich bread-glasses, radish noses, cuddly sausage, a ham-man, or edible plates made of salty bread dough and crockery made of sugar are all in a days work. No food is safe from her. She uses all that is edible to create tasty objects of art.

“I don’t just think about the food on the plate, but everything relating to it.” To her, atmosphere, sound, ingredients, color, texture and scent are just as important as the edible ingredients themselves.

To say that I am a huge fan of this amazing lady’s work would be quite an understatement.

Just have a look at the dinner party she designed for Droog back in 2006 {image above – read about it here}.

Images via Designlines.

I highly recommend watching her lecture at PopTech 2009 which will give you a greater understanding of what she does. I would also suggest having a look at this articlewritten by the wonderful Lucy from The Design Files {which happens to be my favourite blog}. Also worth while reading is this fantastic interviewwith Marije on When Eating a Wolf.

And if you wish to stay up to date on Marije’s latest movements, you can follow her on Twitter.

Coincidentally, just after I decided to write this post, I learned that Marije has just launched a new website. Hurrah! The site is currently under “crisis correction construction”. If you help them correct any spelling mistakes, you could win a signed copy of her book EAT LOVE. How good is that?!

Below are some images from the book.