Architecture and design outfit Kram Weisshaar has created a limited-edition series of dinner plates for porcelain brand Nymphenburg.

Called My Private Sky, the plates combine computer technology and traditional craft techniques: the designers ask customers where and when they were born, and then use a specially written computer programme to generate the precise arrangement of stars and planets as they would have appeared at that particular time and place.

The patterns are then hand-painted onto the plates by Nymphenburg artisans.

My Private Sky is being launched in September at the Monaco Yacht Show, of all places.

Below is a press release from Kram Weisshaar:

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Date: July 1st 2007

Project: MY PRIVATE SKY for PORZELLAN MANUFAKTUR NYMPHENBURG

Clemens Weisshaar and Reed Kram have designed a limited-edition set of hand made and hand painted dinner plates for Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg titled MY PRIVATE SKY. The project represents the ultimate in personalization: each set shows the night sky at the date and place of birth of the buyer.

The first of a series of projects to be designed by the offices of Kram/Weisshaar for Nymphenburg, the project will be presented to the public during the Monaco Yacht Show September 19-22 in Monte Carlo. When a buyer orders his set of plates he gives his date and place of birth. The buyer’s personal night sky map is then calculated by a custom computer program and printed onto a set of blueprints followed by Nymphenburg’s master porcelain painters. Each set of dinner plates involves the hand-painting of some 500 stars, nebulae, planets and constellations in gold and platinum.

A thorough analysis of the traditional methods at Nymphenburg, the Bavarian Kings’ former porcelain manufacture, turned the designers’ attention towards utilizing and redefinig centuries old processes in a contemporary context. By designing a program rather than a single drawing, the designers combine the excellence of the master porcelain painters at Nymphenburg with the potential of custom-developed
computer code.

Nymphenburg will issue a series of 100+10 unique copies of MY PRIVATE SKY.