The first thing on the floor
The kitchen is only quiet until someone expects breakfast.
A kettle starts. A cupboard opens. Somewhere below the worktop, a cat takes up a position from which every delay can be observed. The people in the room are thinking about coffee. The cat would prefer them to concentrate.
It is an ordinary scene, but it contains an object we ask a great deal of. A feeding bowl has to belong on the floor all day, be picked up and washed, then return to the same patch of kitchen tomorrow. We see it when we come home. We step around it with the shopping. It is as much a part of the room as the chair beside it.
That is where we started with Rico.
Two bowls, one place
Labbvenn makes Rico with two stainless-steel bowls set into a stand formed from a single sheet of aluminium. The bowls lift out. The stand stays behind. There is something satisfying about that small division of labour: the part that needs washing goes to the sink; the part that gives the object its shape remains in the room.
We chose it for both halves of that arrangement. Steel where the meal happens. A simple, matte shape around it. Enough presence to look deliberate, without making the feeding corner the subject of the kitchen.
Choosing things for an animal often begins with a practical question and ends with an aesthetic compromise. Yet this is an object we will look at several times a day. It deserves the same attention as the kettle, the bread board, the lamp we moved three times before leaving it exactly where it began.
After breakfast
The quieter part of the ritual comes when the meal is over. Lift the bowls out, wash them by hand or put them in the dishwasher. Wipe the aluminium stand with a damp cloth. Put everything back.
These are modest details. They are also the details that become your day. A beautiful object still has to be manageable when the coffee is going cold and you are already looking for your keys.
Rico comes in Black, White, Grey and Mokka. We have chosen all four for our edit. The darker shades can settle beside a cabinet or a table leg; the lighter ones can sit gently against a pale wall. The room gets a vote. The animal will probably reserve judgement until breakfast.
Why should the bowl on the floor be less considered than the one on the table? For us, that question is answered in the things you touch: the edge you lift, the surface you wipe, the empty bowl ready for tomorrow.
Rico by Labbvenn. An aluminium stand with two removable stainless-steel bowls. Made in Poland. Our colour edit: Black, White, Grey and Mokka.