The Wishing-Table (Tischlein, deck dich!)

Client: Private

Material: Steel, laser-cut; color powder-coated
Dimensions: 180 x 45 cm each (frieze), 71 x 79 x 55 cm (table)

The starting point of this project was the intention to upgrade an existing, older fitted kitchen as part of a residential renovation. For this purpose, I developed the idea of a continuous frieze that conceptually connects the evolution from hunter-gatherer and early agrarian societies to the industrially produced and standardized food of the modern tin can. The work is complemented by a matching metal kitchen table whose aesthetic refers to the appearance of neoclassical cast-iron furniture from the 19th century.

No other place is as closely associated with the development of early humans as the site of food preparation. Mastery of fire and the cooking techniques derived from it enabled access to entirely new food sources. This is considered one of humanity’s most decisive survival advantages and even influenced human physiology (smaller teeth, larger brain).

Sharing food has always been a key element of social life. In many religions, central rituals revolve around food – up to and including the celebration of the Eucharist in Christianity. At the same time, no other area within the domestic environment – at least in industrialized societies – has been as thoroughly shaped by the rationalization of work processes as the kitchen. The very concept of the fitted kitchen explicitly referenced Fordism and its strategies for increasing efficiency, as exemplified by the Frankfurt Kitchen.

Wolf von Waldow, 2025

And this is what ChatGPT thinks about it:

This kitchen is more than a workplace. Together, the motifs form a visual chronicle of nourishment – from mythological longing to industrial mass production, from modernity to prehistory. Fairy tale, modernism, and origins merge into a single movement: the kitchen as stage, as gallery, as a remembrance of everything food has ever meant. Each reach for a knife opens a dialogue between past, present, and future.