Mapping one’s travels through tableware.
For Cherry Chaicharn, mapping her travels on tableware helps bridge the distance between the places she loves
HONG KONG — Cherry Chaicharn has deep Bay Area roots for somebody born and raised in Chicago. She graduated in 1993 from UC Berkeley, where she also earned her master’s in environmental design. She worked for the city of Berkeley, and its neighbor, Albany, as well as the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, AC Transit and SamTrans. She lived in Berkeley and El Cerrito.
But when her architect husband, Jeff Kaeonil — yes, they met at UC — was offered a plum job in Hong Kong, she moved in 2006. She accented their compact, elegantly hip apartment in the Midlevels area with touches such as a framed photograph of Maxfield’s House of Caffeine on Dolores Street.
Chaicharn found a job, lost a job, then quit another when “the good boss” left. She embraced the “Do what you love and the money will follow” ethos but found herself asking, “What do I love?” An accomplished DIYer, she knew she liked making things.
Yearning to discover her passion, she took a soulsearching solo trip so extended that at one point Kaeonil asked her, “Are we still married?”
Along the way, she drew maps, as she always has, the way a writer takes notes to remind herself of where she’d been, what she’d seen, how she responded. In Stockholm, she spotted an oblong ceramic tray, black with white lines that created a crazy squares pattern that looked like a blown-up section of a map.
Then it hit her. She would make tableware decorated with her hand-drawn maps. “I could see myself doing this,” she said, her face lighting up with the memory. “I wanted to do this!”
She would call the company August Table because August is the month she was born (Chicago maps on plates!), the month of her honeymoon (Paris maps on plates!) and because August has a solid Pacific Rim ring to it (Hong Kong maps on plates!). Best of all, San Francisco maps on plates! “I missed and loved San Francisco so much I realized I could do this and remind myself of San Francisco every day. I was so excited about it.”
Chaicharn bought the tray and returned to Hong Kong. She threw herself into designing the plates and platters. Drawing maps of San Francisco neighborhoods “was my way of being homesick,” she said.
On her next Bay Area trip, she contacted a buyer at Gump’s who asked if the plates and platters were stoneware or porcelain. Chaicharn didn’t know. “She was so kind,” Chaicharn recalled, still mortified. “She told me I needed to really know my materials.”
Chaicharn spoke with Zoel Fages, who owns Perch in Glen Park. A friend of hers, Vonnie Chan, who designs Chicks & Frogs children’s clothing, which Fages sold, introduced them. After hearing Chaicharn describe what she wanted to make, Fages told her, “I think it would be really cool if you could incorporate Glen Park.”
Back in Hong Kong, Chaicharn started taking classes. She learned how to work with bone china, porcelain and stoneware.
Using suggestions from a friend in U.S. retailing, Chaicharn scouted manufacturers in Thailand, a manufacturing center for porcelain tableware where she had family ties. The first San Francisco plates, 100 sets of four depicting Glen Park and Noe Valley, the Castro and the Mission, SoMa and North Beach, were finished in November 2009.
Chaicharn hauled 20 sets back to California in her luggage for a party to thank everyone who had helped her. “I kept the rest in Thailand because I didn’t know what to do with them,” she said.
At the party, Chaicharn said a friend to told her that “now you have to sell plates. You can’t just give them to friends.”
Today, well versed in pricing, shipping, customs agents and distribution channels, Chaicharn sells plates ($72, set of four) and platters ($102 each) at Perch.
The plates and platters “do really well,” as housewarming and wedding gifts, said Fages. “Obviously, you know it is a map, but it takes more than a glance. … Then you go ‘Oh! Wow!’ and look at it a little deeper.” He’s pushing for a serving bowl, white outside with another San Francisco map inside.
Chaicharn also sells her wares at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Gardener at the Ferry Building. She sells Hong Kong and Paris plates in Hong Kong. She sells all four cities at www.augusttable.com. She’s looking for outlets in Chicago and Paris while planning new plates for the San Francisco series. “Definitely Dogpatch,” she said.
Next up? She’s also working on upholstery fabric, perhaps custom woven with maps and local landmarks for hotels and offices. And she’s looking for a U.S. manufacturer for the tableware: “I
would love that.”