Dr. Ella Hawkins reconceives ancient artifacts and precious objects as edible replicas – Huge
Academic research is known to be a niche and is often opaque, but Dr. Ella Hawkins found a pleasant way to share learning. The Birmingham artist and design historian translated her interest in Shakespeare’s performance, costumes and Matieral culture into edible replicas.
Hawkins baked a batch of cookies, which she paired with on royal frosting. Decoration requires academic turn as she uses tiny brushes and mini projectors to help track images of William Morris’ ornate floral patterns or coastal scenes in English delftware. Depending on complexity, rendering a design on a single cookie can take two to four hours. Not surprisingly, insignificant calligraphy and portraits are the most demanding.
Hawkins first merged baking and her research when studying undergraduate clothing design at Warwick University about a decade ago. She decided to bake cupcakes based on Shakespeare’s work examined by class. She told Colossal, adding: “It feels like a fun way to look back at all the different design styles we cover throughout the year.”
I decorate cakes and cookies based on costume designs through my PhD (mainly something radiated during negotiations, or as a gift from the designers I interviewed), and branched out and spent a lot of time doing cookie versions of other crafts during the popularity to keep busy.
She has since published an academic book on the subject and is a senior lecturer at the Royal Welsh Academy of Music and Drama. But she also continues to transform artifacts and precious objects from the museum’s collection into delicious canvases.
There is a set of crafted in collaboration with Milton’s Cabin, which is the museum where John Milton completes the epic country house Heaven is lost. The series is designed to evoke the exquisite portraits of the frontal portraits, which contain printed titles and logos that appear directly in 17th-century books.
Hawkins has increasingly explored ancient Greece throughout history and has collected a series of pottery inspired by objects in the Ashmolean Museum. Using the arcuate surface to mimic the curvature of the container, irregular shapes with fragments of various motifs and figures, she applied Sgraffito technology, a Renaissance method that scratches the surface to reveal the underlying layer.
The weathered look is the result of blotting the light brown grey bottom before using a transcription tool to scratch and crack the royal frosting coating. She then mixes it with vodka and black food coloring to mimic dirt and wear. (It’s worth watching this process video.)
Apart from the few people reserved for the talks and events, Hawkins assured us that the rest of her cookies were eaten. Find more of her jobs on her website and on Instagram.
