Fulfill A Sweet Tooth With Studio Yellowdot’s Creations

Biscuits, logo-embossed color chips conceived for Turkish tile manufacturer Gorbon Ceramics by Studio Yellowdot, an atelier and creative consultancy encompassing products, lighting, furniture, and spaces. Photography by Ozan Gür.

Like Hansel and Gretel discovering the gingerbread house, visitors at last September’s Maison&Objet trade show in Paris were enchanted by Turkish workshop Gorbon Ceramics’ booth, which looked good enough to eat. On display was Patisserie—a Ladurée-worthy collection of ceramic tiles and objects by Studio Yellowdot, inspired by donuts, éclairs, and other delectable baked goods. The studio’s founders, husband-and-wife team Bodin Hon and Dilara Kan Hon, are keen home chefs who often come up with food-related ideas, such as jelly lamps, eggshell screens, and seedpod cabinets, while channeling cultural, artisanal, and technological influences from their respective backgrounds.

Born and educated in Istanbul, Kan Hon studied interior design at Marmara University as a way of harnessing strong artistic impulses before exploring more conceptual approaches in a master’s program at Milan’s Istituto Europeo di Design. She complemented the discipline of academia with time spent in the more instinct-driven environment of handcraft ateliers. “I worked in a puppet studio, for instance,” she recalls, “which gave me a lot of inspiration and freedom.” Intriguingly, her husband’s family is in the toy manufacturing business, and he shares her sense of play. A Chinese American born in Los Angeles and raised in Hong Kong and New Zealand, Hon studied bioengineering at Rice University in Houston, where he also worked at NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center developing next-generation space toilets. Attracted by the creative possibilities of industrial design, he enrolled at IED, where he met Kan Hon.

The couple launched Yellowdot in 2017, its cheery name a tribute to the sun’s life-giving energy. Specializing in product, lighting, furniture, and spatial design, the atelier and creative consultancy has studios in Hong Kong and Istanbul. We talked to the founders about their working methods, recent projects, and upcoming plans.

Yellowdot’s married founders, Dilara Kan Hon and Bodin Hon, who split their time between the firm’s locations in Hong Kong and Istanbul. Photography by Ali Gülşener.

Studio Yellowdot On Their Deliciously Sweet Ceramics, Furnishings, and More 

Interior Design: What are your individual perspectives on design, and how do you combine them?

Bodin Hon: I’m more technical, asking if something is feasible. And I like to invent things, so there’s technology as well. I look at new materials and mechanisms to create different types of surprises.

Dilara Kan Hon: Coming from an art background, I’m interested in spontaneity and being aware of what I’m feeling: I feel like this is the right color, I feel like this is the form we should use. From the start, Bodin would say, “Prove it,” something nobody had really demanded of me before. It was a big challenge, but it taught us both how to discuss our ideas, how to put them together.

BH: We start with sketches or some material, followed by plenty of back-and-forth critiquing until we’re both happy. In the beginning, we did many self-driven projects that could sit around for months until we found the right solution. With clients, we have to be quicker.

ID: An early piece, the Jelly table lamp, is like a cake stand serving up a treat. How did that evolve?

DKH: One day we were making jello and realized we could use the same silicone mold for resin, which we’d been experimenting with. We ended up with solid “jellies” that we needed to find a use for. A lamp was the answer. When you touch the metal base, the light dims.

The designers showing pendant fixtures from Hatch, a 2021 series incorporating discarded eggshells, resin, and brass. Photography courtesy of Ali Gülşener.

ID: You also use resin with recycled eggshells for the Hatch pendant fixture. Tell us about that.

BH: We discovered that used eggshells, washed and set in resin, form a thin, strong, lightweight matrix. The material is translucent, which gave us the idea of developing it into a pendant light. It takes three or four hours to handcraft the circular diffuser, putting the right size eggshells in piece by piece, kind of like baking a pizza.

ID: Eggs of another sort inspired the cylindrical Ova Pink cabinet, right?

DKH: I wanted to create something that symbolized my origins, the seeds from which I grew. There’s a traditional handwoven fabric called kutnu from Gaziantep, a town I used to visit as a child. Then, in a Hong Kong park, I saw the bright-pink egg clusters of an apple snail, and I merged them with my cultural seeds in the cabinet, which is covered with 540 handsewn kutnu balls. It’s about 67 inches tall—bigger than me!

Ova Pink, a version of the cabinet covered in balls evoking the egg clusters of apple snails. Photography courtesy of Ali Gülşener.

Made from solid blocks of American cherry and maple, the 2023 Checkered bench, accompanied by a custom chess set. Photography courtesy of Volkan Dogar.

ID: How did you come up with the Checkered bench’s attention-grabbing pattern?

BH: The American Hardwood Export Council commissioned “future heirlooms” from seven emerging Turkish designers. There were three woods to choose from; we took cherry and maple. Games like backgammon and chess are very popular here, so we turned a checkerboard into a piece of furniture assembled from CNC-cut solid-wood blocks. There’s a custom set of chessmen, too, so people can enjoy impromptu matches.

ID: Where did the idea for your Patisserie tile for Gorbon Ceramics come from?

DKH: The brief was to present a new collection at Maison&Objet. It was our first time working with ceramic, so visiting the factory with its giant kilns, clay mixing machines, and racks of hot ceramics was special. It was like being in a big bakery where everything looked colorful and yummy. Right there we thought, Why not treat the project as making baked goods for a pastry shop in Paris? In the end, we created a whole confectionery store, all from ceramic.

Biscuits, logo-embossed color chips conceived for Turkish tile manufacturer Gorbon Ceramics by Studio Yellowdot, an atelier and creative consultancy encompassing products, lighting, furniture, and spaces. Photography by Ozan Gür.

Hand-glazing Donut tiles from the same series. Photography courtesy of Ozan Gür.

ID: What’s next?

DKH: We’re working more with eggshell and developing some furniture pieces. Also, we’re designing our wonderful new apartment in a beautiful historic area of Istanbul.

Éclair dry-pressed ceramic relief tiles, part of Patisserie. Photography courtesy of Ozan Gür.

Conventional flat tiles linking the 3-D relief elements. Photography courtesy of Ozan Gür.

Complementing the tile, Icing Éclair, a 2024 limited-edition series of decorative objects hand-finished using cheflike frosting techniques. Photography courtesy of Ozan Gür.

Sketches of Ova Orange from a 2022 collection of three plywood cabinets upholstered with seedpods made of kutnu, a traditional silk-and-cotton textile from Gaziantep, Turkey. Photography courtesy of Studio Yellowdot.

From the 2023 Patisserie collection for Gorbon, the Biscotto stool inspired by the Italian cookie, featuring a dry-pressed ceramic top, slip-cast ceramic legs, and brass feet. Photography courtesy of Ozan Gür.

Named after the gelatin dessert, the 2019 Jelly table lamp combining hand-cast resin, chrome-polished stainless steel, and glass. Photography courtesy of Ali Gülşener.

Fitted with smoothly rotating tops, Millstone side tables from 2022 showcasing yellow, jade, and black-and-white Turkish marbles. Photography courtesy of Ali Gülşener.