As a highlight of the Toronto exhibition Claesson Koivisto Rune + Mjölk in 2013 we set out to design something unique for Mjölk – the sweetest little design store/gallery in North America. We decided to design a milk and sugar set for your coffee or tea: A small ceramic pitcher, a wooden lid that doubles as a sugar bowl and a tray with one wood side for some cake and one metal side for the hot kettle.

Swedish life in general is rather informal. Society has done away with most oldfashioned rituals and form of address. But we do drink a lot of coffee. In fact, Sweden ranks the world’s top consumer of it. In business and in private it is customary to serve coffee or ’fika’ whenever we meet. And it’s always very casually offered, but in its practice fika is in fact a kind of modern ceremony. Up to five or eight times a day.

We have of course encountered the strictly ritual Japanese tea ceremony which is really about everything else than drinking, like elegance, refinement and the enhancement of the soul.

Without being too philosphical about it we thought it could be a good idea to propose a marriage between the eastern and western way of drinking coffee or tea with the help of decent serving tools; To add a dash of ceremony to our own casual ritual.