2015 hering berlin manifest

Elegant dining or the essence of the well-laid table The notion of “essence” refers to the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something (a phenomenon, object or viewpoint), which determines its character and without which it would not be what it is.

That is, pretty well, how the dictionary defines it – and that is exactly how we intend it to be understood.

The Hering Berlin factory – Who are we and what are we?

We are a Berlin manufacturing company called Hering Berlin. Our products are made with the aim of constituting the essence of the well-laid table. They include, in the broadest terms, products such as crockery, drinking glasses, table textiles, lighting and, on top of that, anything and everything that can help give a table form and func-tion in line with our thinking and aesthetic philosophy. The origins of the manufacturing company, which was founded in 1992, and hence our core competence, come from the manufacture of high-quality (biscuit) porcelain.

2/9 

The starting point for everything The foundations of the creative inspiration that runs throughout the firm bear the unmistakeable stamp of the personality and creativity of company founder Stefanie Hering. The exceptional abilities of the designer and master craftswoman include, in addition to her unique visual creativity, the extraordinary craftsman-like skill required to be able to produce formally sophisticated designs in dimensions that push the boundaries of what can be made in porcelain. This results from the constant striving to extend and fill in our knowledge of the possibilities fo hand-made porcelain. And this leads us directly to an essential principle of our activity.

3/9 

Curiosity as a matter of principle The curiosity to get to the heart of the matter and to challenge presuppositions is said to have been one of Leonardo da Vinci’s most important characteristics – and we are passionately devoted to this notion in our factory. For Hering Berlin, challenging re-ceived ideas and getting to the heart of the matter is synonymous with developing further what has been handed down to us by tradition. Every era has its viewpoint and values; what can happen when we unreflectingly stick to what we know can be demonstrated with the following example. After a visit to the Meissen factory in April 1813, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote: “It is odd and pretty well unbelievable that you find little there that you would actually want in your own home.”

His judgement on the exhibition was that it comprised “above all, things that no longer have any appeal, and not just in one instance, but in abundance, in hundreds, even thousands.”

At that time, development had slumbered in the doldrums and it was not only in the factory of the market leader at the time, Meissen, that the resultant sales crisis manifested itself. Nor was it the only crisis in the history of European porcelain, though the causes remained, nevertheless, similar. A fact that gives inspiration to the curiosity principle in our company.

High expectation and top-class workmanship The desire to develop new things must be fundamentally accompanied by high expectations.

This can take the form of a requirement to develop further what already exists, improve on it, adapt it in form and function to the demands of the time or, indeed, reinvent it completely afresh. For our company, this results in a fundamental and extremely high expectation of requirements and qualifications with regard to the craftsmanship in the manufacture of porcelain, glass, metal and textiles. Putting these aspirations into practice imbues our products with top-class, meticulous workmanship and the highest standards in terms of function, form, production and materials. The standards apply to all colleagues, but in particular, of course, to the craftsmen and women on the shop floor and to the suppliers.

Aspiration and curiosity Those, like us, who seek to represent extreme aspiration and curiosity in design, materials and production, should perhaps also not hesitate to question outmoded expectations for use. In the world of porcelain, we have therefore liberated ourselves from any fixed notions of ‘services’ or ‘sets’ as in the tea service, the coffee-set and the dinner service. Our company aspires to redefine anew the ways in which crockery is to be used. The received version of strictly formal and decorative lines, hitherto seen in the production of crockery is replaced in our work by the possibility of combinations of a variety of lines.

4/9

Shaking off the ‘Biedermeier’ tradition Prerequisites for the redefinition of the notion of the tableware ‘service’ are the clear forms and decorative features of our Hering Berlin products, as well as our constant challenging of the meaning and purpose of individual products. The standard products belonging to a traditional service tend, even today, to derive from the socially constrained attitudes of the Biedermeier in the nineteenth century.

In creating Hering Berlin products, we deliberately take our cue from the attitudes embodied in current strands, which emphasise enjoyment and function.

5/9

Hering Berlin – the time machine Opening up the traditionally closed notion of what a tableware service is admits a new way of looking at the possibilities for entertaining both in the family and in social situations. At Hering Berlin we seek to shift the concept of hospitality out of its socially somewhat stiff, strictly formal dimension into one that is rather more underpinned by emotion. Frank pleasure, uncomplicated enjoyment, a clear aesthetic and pure joy of life – that is how we see Hering Berlin. With our products we bring a whole new inter-pretation of the spirit of the modern age to the dining table.

But we must be careful: the spirit of the age is not to be confused with the notion of prevailing fashions. Our constant drive to present the sheer quality of our Hering Berlin products is linked with the aspiration to high-profile form and design.

In this endeavour, our major aim is to transfer materials that have traditionally been in use for centuries into a contemporary stylistic approach, without falling into the trap of superficially modish trends. We require all new processing techniques to conform to our expectations for quality and authenticity. And that is how we back our claim to be part of the avant-garde in porcelain production and, as such, to be working on developing the essential nature of the well-laid dining table, developments that will have a fundamental and longer-term effect. That way, however, we also see ourselves in opposition to those trendsetters, who are concerned purely with creating short-term new fashions.

6/9 

Creating rooms and spaces with clean-cut lines Our products stand out because of their very own design style, which relies on clear lines and clean-cut decorative features. This clarity of line and feature emphasises and points up the surrounding spaces, in which its effect is felt. In that sense, our company’s collections change spatial contexts, without conflicting with other formal qualities. This means that products from our factory are as unlikely to clash in a baroque setting as they are in the purist visual contexts of contemporary architecture. Our collections never conflict with existing rooms, they create new spaces. With their clarity of form, they concentrate on the essentials.

Ethics of production The high standards that we have been talking of so far inevitably entail high expectations in terms of the ethics of production. We are therefore expressly committed to fair conditions of manufacture. All production goes on solely under socially acceptable and validated conditions.

We have nothing to do with cheap production lines, which exploit the craftsmen and workers involved in manufacture. Production at our Hering Berlin factory reflects the extraordinary ability of its craftsmen and women and enables everyone involved in the process to have pride in the products they create.

7/9 

People who like our products, and people who make them their own Since it was invented, porcelain has been one of those products for whose manufacture and material qualities people have always had a certain respect. On the one hand that is undoubtedly due to a history of porcelain that is shrouded in mystery, from far away China to Europe, discovered by alchemists in their search for a way to make gold, finding its first home in the palaces of kings and princes and for a long time the visible expression of authority and wealth.

On the other, it is, however, also due to its peculiar material qualities, the ability to appear almost transparent, the fact that it is extremely strong yet so very fragile, noble and expensive.

The ravages of time have, of course, taken their toll on porcelain, too; its former exclusivity has been massively eroded, opening the way to a broader world.

For our company, this has meant finding our own place in the world of porcelain and that of elegant dining. For us, a virtual visit by Goethe ought never to end in “finding little that you would actually want in your own home.”

The products that come from our factory appeal to cosmopolitan, open-minded people, who can access and appreciate what is special about our collections. Irrespective of the size of anyone’s wallet, our products are headed for such individualists who create their own world of taste, independent of the fashionable mainstream.

We do not expect everyone, who likes our style of form and materials, to equip their dining table exclusively with our products. That is, in principle, extremely difficult for young people or a young family on economic grounds, irrespective of the brand of the particular company.

But we also know that even just a few individual items of our collection will achieve their effect.

8/9

Our work is not so much about decoration for the dining table as about its essence.

Stefanie Hering - Berlin GmbH / Königsweg 303 / 14109 Berlin / Germany / T +49.30.8105411-0 / F +49.30.8105411-29 / info@heringberlin.com www.heringberlin.com / Handelsregister: Amtsgericht Charlottenburg HRB 73558 / Geschäftsführung: Stefanie Hering, Wiebke Lehmann, Götz Esslinger