Turning the tables with Mirage's new EpicArc series

In collaboration with architect and designer Andrea Boschetti, Italian porcelain stoneware specialist Mirage has developed EpicArc, a sustainability-driven new table collection whose legs are the focal point.

By Mirage and Nick Compton for

Mirage

June 29, 2022 | 10:00 pm CUT

Mirage’s EpicArc collection upturns conventional table design, setting glass tops on top of ceramic arches and triangular pedestals for a strong architectural impact

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, one of the world’s leading and most innovative makers of porcelain stoneware, worked with Italian architect and designer Andrea Boschetti to create EpicArc

Ceramics with power and purpose

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.

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.

Strikingly contemporary but echoing classical forms, Boschetti’s tables create a focal point for any room

Architectural impact

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.

With EpicArc, Mirage wanted to create a new design, radical not only in form and execution but also in terms of sustainability

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.

Designed for home or office, the EpicArc collection includes large, small and modular utility tables

Dramatic appeal

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.

Mirage says its new ceramic bases are chemical-free and slot together without the need for glues. Component parts can be easily recycled or re-used

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.

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Pavullo nel Frignano, Italy