Transatlântica Large Plate by Brunno Jahara
  The Exceptional

A collaboration between gifted Carioca designer Brunno Jahara and the venerable 200-year-old Portuguese porcelain manufacturer Vista Alegre, the Transatlântica Collection is a spirited homage to the shared history of Brazil and Portugal.

Having spent years traveling and working around the world before returning to Brazil to open his design studio in 2012, Jahara is uniquely poised to understand cross-cultural currents. His new Transatlântica project was created during his residency in Northern Portugal with porcelain masters Vista Alegre and brings together old and new world aesthetics in a playful tableware collection that is at once refined and rebellious.

Jahara describes working at Vista Alegre as “paradise.” To conceive the collection, he delved into the company’s archives and workshops, where he discovered a newfound respect for the sheer skill and patience required of the highly trained artisans who take up to a week to finish a single piece. Engaging with colonial history and the age-old preciousness of porcelain—which remains today a customary gift at Portuguese weddings—Jahara embellished traditional blue-and-white-glazed porcelain forms with unexpected and eccentric hand-painted illustrations drawn from Brazilian culture: caravels, compasses, seahorses, the royal crown, and guns, to name a few.