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Mise en Place

TC 100, written from the dish room

Soft light across an empty stone counter in a quiet dish room, with an empty steel drying rack.
Made with AI for Mise en Place.

Hans "Nick" Roericht designed the TC 100 stacking tableware in 1958–59, as his diploma project at the Ulm School of Design. Rosenthal put it into production under its Thomas name in 1961. White glazed porcelain: cups, saucers, bowls, a lidded soup cup.

Known here from museum records, not from a shelf. The HfG-Archiv record gives the reason for it: the school's own canteen lacked well-designed dishes. It also lists Roericht's four criteria. Stack well. Survive the dishwasher. Be robust. Keep one consistent form.

Three of the four are about what happens to a dish when nobody is eating from it: the stack, the machine, the knock against the next piece. Only the last is about the table, and it serves the stack too. Pieces that share one form stack into one tower.

MoMA's measurements show the result. Nothing in its set is tall. The teacup is 5.7 cm high. The soup cup is 5.2 cm high and nearly twice as wide, its lid under 2 cm.

The archive record ends with the detail that closes the loop. Shortly after production began, the HfG canteen acquired the service. The room that asked for the dishes ended up eating from them.

By Raz Rotenberg, made with AI

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