“Unsatisfied desire is in itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” — C. S. Lewis

No food is as powerful as dessert or gets as tied up in our issues of guilt, longing, abstinence, and attraction. We celebrate birthdays with it. Grandparents spoil children with it. It’s the first to get cut from a diet and the first some flock to for comfort. And yet for me, it represents the unattainable. I react to food with high histamine, salicylate, and copper content, and it results in very severe dietary restriction.
This body of work started as a therapeutic exercise in deconstruction and a re-training of the mind to look at dessert as form rather than food. It soon became a technical riddle, and I became a food taxidermist of french pastries. To glass, I combined my love of porcelain, realizing where one material floundered, the other excelled. This body of work utilizes nearly every possible technique in both mediums; glassblowing, hot-sculpting, lampwork, fusing, casting, and grinding in glass and well as the ceramic techniques of hand-building, throwing, and using a good old fashioned pastry tube.
The following desserts are all handmade from glass or ceramic, which includes the plates, cups, glass jars, cherry stems, sprinkles… everything. There are only 4 objects that are not handmade: the crème brûlée spoon, the wood sticks for the caramel apple/chocolate banana/popsicles, the paper cups for the chocolate truffles, and the box they are in. Everything else was made by hand.
Also see The American Series.
“A raspberry set on a piping of whipped cream set on a crispy tuile, itself set on a bavaroise; tarte au citron, forêt noire, Mont Blanc, all those exquisite French pastries transformed into masterpieces of illusion in the hands of Shayna Leib, who indulges a passion for hyperrealism with fascinating technical virtuosity. She combines glass-which she has worked with for more than twenty years-with porcelain, creating perfect replicas of forty extremely sophisticated pastries, and setting them against forty American desserts. Culture against culture. In this elaborate trick, everything is artificial. Every detail fools the eye: glossy icing, chocolate ribbons, mousses, golden crusts, fruits, textures, sculpted sugar, colors. The cremè de la cremè, a feast for the eyes-but you could chip a tooth on it!”
— Olivier Castaing, Curator of Céramiques Gourmandes. Bernardaud Fondation- Limoges, France
Carachoc Petit fours Crème brûlée Gâteau au fromage et citron vert Gâteau au chocolat noir Macaron Dôme au chocolat Savarin la crème de menthe Truffle au chocolat Gâteau au fromage et caramel Pistachio Dessert Bar Millefeuille Mont-blanc The Bourgi Entremet la cerise et au citron vert Petit gateau au chocolat Petit gateau aux amandes Petit gateau au noix de coco Gateau aux amandes Mousse au chocolat et la cerise Gateau au fromage et la mangue Mousse au chocolat Millefeuille Tarte aux mûres Macaron au chocolat Entremet aux mures et la lavande Entremet au chocolat noir Tarte au café Eclair Petit gateaux au chocolat The Ostapchuk Entremet la framboise Mont Blanc Gateau l’orange et la creme Chocolat chaud Profiterole craquelin Gateau au fromage et la framboise Entremet au guanaja Gateau au chocolat et moka Pate a choux Meringue Tarte aux framboises Gateau au fromage et citron vert Gateau au fromage et la framboise Gateau au fromage et la framboise Gateau au fromage et caramel moka Mousse au chocolat et cafe Dessert bar Gateau aux chataignes Meringue Gateau la reglisse Ode a l’enfance Profiterole craquelin Noisette au caramel Tarte au cafe Gateau au chocolat et moka
On display at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Bordeaux, France
Photos courtesy of Helene Huret
