Featured table setting
A seat at Inge Rylant’s Dream Table
What does the perfect dining table look like for someone devoted to beauty? Belgian visual artist Inge Rylant was asked that very question by Serax. Her answer: a serene Japanese-style aperitif in a traditional home, captured through the lens of her husband, Ringo Gomez.
Tell us a little about yourselves.
Inge Rylant: “I’m Inge, a freelance illustrator and visual artist. Over the years I’ve worked on a wide range of projects, from textile print design to illustrating a Japanese children’s book. These days, my focus has shifted more toward autonomous work. At the core of my practice are digital drawings that I translate into physical form, usually through manual silkscreen prints on paper. My work is abstract and deeply rooted in colour fields — I’m fascinated by the way colours interact and converse with one another. Many people say my work has a distinctly Japanese feel, which makes sense in a way. My husband Ringo and I spend half the year living in Japan, and the country’s visual culture naturally seeps into my work.”
Ringo Gomez: “I’m Ringo, a freelance journalist and photographer working for publications including De Standaard, De Tijd and Design Anthology. My work revolves around interiors, design and Japan. Last year I published a book on Japanese craftsmanship called Shosa – Meditations in Japanese Handwork, exploring the quiet gestures and rituals of Japanese makers.”
Where does your love for Japan come from?
Inge: “It’s a question we’re often asked — and rightly so — but the answer remains somewhat elusive. What draws us in are the everyday details of life in Japan: the design of ordinary objects, the way people communicate and move through the world, the architecture of modest homes. So many things there carry a very particular atmosphere that’s difficult to describe but deeply moving to us.”
Ringo: “We first travelled to Japan ten years ago. The famous temples and the overwhelming scale of Tokyo were impressive, of course, but they weren’t what kept pulling us back. Like Inge said, it’s everyday Japanese life that fascinates us. In my book, I try to capture that through the idea of shosa — a serene, sincere way of moving and behaving. It’s about showing respect: for objects, for people, for nature, for your surroundings. Japan is full of beautiful shosa, and that continues to inspire us.”
Naturally, your dream table is set in Japan.
Ringo: “Absolutely. We started from our own Japanese home, where we spend half the year. It’s an old house that once belonged to the grandmother of a friend and that we’re lucky enough to rent. It’s slightly ramshackle, but beautiful. Like many traditional Japanese houses, it’s unbearably hot in summer and freezing in winter. There’s no insulation, no central heating, no air conditioning. When the wind blows outside, you feel it inside too. We heat the rooms with an old oil stove.
“The house is completely back to basics, but its beauty more than makes up for that. It’s located in Matsushima, a small town in northern Japan overlooking a breathtaking bay dotted with 260 tiny islands, some no larger than rocks floating on the water. The famous haiku poet Matsuo Bashō was said to have been left speechless by its beauty during his travels through the north, later immortalised in The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Our house has a beautiful garden, two tatami rooms and an engawa — a transitional corridor-like space with wooden floors and paper sliding doors between the tatami rooms and the outdoors, typical of traditional Japanese architecture. We also photographed in a second house nearby, another traditional home, but impeccably restored — a true dream house.”
We see small dishes, plates and cups scattered across the tatami room. What was the concept?
Inge: “We chose to focus on the aperitif, our favourite moment of the day. An aperitif feels lighter, more fleeting and more relaxed than a formal dinner. Our dream aperitif takes place Japanese-style: seated on tatami mats, sharing saké ricewine— or rather nihonshu, to be technically correct — alongside small bites. Tatami flooring changes the whole experience. Sitting on the floor instead of at a table makes you move differently; it feels freer and more informal.
“For the shoot, I bought a selection of handmade wagashi, traditional Japanese sweets often served during tea ceremonies. They’re beautifully coloured and almost sculptural in themselves. The reference to the tea ceremony was important to me because it’s often misunderstood. People imagine something rigid and ceremonial, but in reality a tea ceremony lasts around four hours and begins with a full meal and saké. Drinking tea is only the final act — more like the coffee served after dinner in Europe.”
You chose to work exclusively with the Ra tableware collection by Ann Demeulemeester and Serax. Why?
Inge: “For me, the choice was simple: either we worked with Ann Demeulemeester’s tableware, or we didn’t do the project at all. Serax collaborates with many interesting designers, but for me, a dream table in a Japanese home could only work with Ann’s collection. I was especially curious to see how the green pieces would interact with the Japanese setting — and as expected, they worked beautifully. But the white ceramics surprised me too. Ann chose a very particular off-white tone.”
Ringo: “Anyone who has spent time in Japan immediately recognises the Japanese references in Ann’s work, but it goes beyond aesthetics. Ra isn’t simply a design by Ann Demeulemeester — it feels like an extension of who she is. She’s one of those rare designers who expresses herself in a completely uncompromising way, which makes every object feel deeply personal. That may sound a little abstract, but what I mean is that Ann creates from a very introspective place. In an era of hyper-consumption, that kind of uncompromising maker feels incredibly refreshing. Most people are willing to dilute their vision. Ann isn’t.”
You deliberately embraced shadow as much as light in the imagery.
Ringo: “It’s no coincidence that it was a Japanese writer — Jun'ichirō Tanizaki — who wrote In Praise of Shadows. I’ve always been drawn to natural light and chiaroscuro. For this shoot, I wanted to play with those contrasts, especially because Ann Demeulemeester’s work also thrives on strong oppositions between light and dark. There wasn’t a single artificial light source involved, which gives the images a very natural atmosphere.”
Inge: “The sunlight in Japan is stronger than in Europe, so the contrasts become naturally more pronounced. That’s part of the beauty of traditional Japanese homes, with their paper screens and wooden interiors. I also feel that natural light intensifies the colours of the ceramics and the wagashi. People often assume Ann Demeulemeester only works in black and white, but that’s not true. She may use colour sparingly, but when she does, it’s always incredibly precise.”
