A Chef's Guide to Commissioning a Custom Shape

When No Existing Plate Is Right

Sometimes a dish is designed and there is no shape in any catalogue, ours included, that suits it. A course built around a specific negative-space composition, a bowl that needs to cradle a liquid at a particular angle, a rim built to hide a garnish until the last second. That's what Vipeso, our custom-mold service, exists for.

Where It Starts

Every Vipeso project starts with the chef, not with us. A sketch on a napkin, a rough shape drawn from imagination, even a verbal description of what the dish needs — we work from whatever the chef already has in their head. We're not designing a shape and offering it to you; we're building the shape you already imagined.

From Sketch to Mold

Once the shape is agreed, we produce a mold specific to that design. This is the step that separates a custom shape from picking a variant out of an existing collection — tooling has to be made before a single piece can be produced.

Small Batches, Not Mass Production

Because the mold is new and specific to one client, we produce in short runs of 150–200 units per commission. That's enough to outfit a menu item across a full service run without the volume commitment a factory tooling job would demand elsewhere.

What It Costs You in Time

A custom shape takes longer than choosing from an existing collection — mold-making and test firings add weeks, not days. It's worth reserving for the dish that genuinely needs it, not every course on the menu. But for the signature piece that defines a tasting menu, it's often the only route that gets the shape actually right.

What to Bring to the First Call

The more we know about the dish, the faster the shape settles. Useful starting points are a sketch or photo reference, the portion and rough plate size, whether the dish is eaten with cutlery, a spoon or by hand, how it is carried from the pass, and how many covers the course will serve each night.

Choosing the Glaze

We will discuss whether to use a glaze from the existing collections, which keeps the piece consistent with the rest of your table, or to develop the finish with you. Reactive glazes behave differently on every form, pooling in hollows and thinning on edges, so test firings show how the glaze sits on your shape before production starts. Our glaze finishes guide explains how each finish behaves.

Planning the Timeline

Mold-making and test firings come before production, so start a custom piece well ahead of a menu launch. A standard first order from our collections usually takes 4–6 weeks; a custom shape takes longer. We give you a timeline on the first call, once we know the shape.

Reordering

Once the mold exists, later runs skip the tooling stage and are quicker to produce. Build a breakage reserve into the first run so service is never short while the next batch is made. You can read more about how our bespoke process works, from first call to kiln.

For the full range, see our handcrafted porcelain tableware for restaurants, or talk to the makers about your menu.