When Objects Meet People
What we learned when FOSSILGLOW left the studio and entered people's hands.
We arrived in Hong Kong with objects. We leave with conversations.
For most of their lives, these objects had existed in a very controlled world — on sketchbook pages, as prototypes, in photographs, and eventually on the shelves of FOSSILGLOW. At HKTDC Food Expo in Hong Kong, something different happened. People picked them up. They turned them over in their hands. They asked what they were made from. They imagined where they might place them at home.
Some were drawn to the quiet concrete trays. Others went directly to the dinosaurs. And suddenly, objects I had known intimately as a designer began to have lives that no longer belonged entirely to me.
Some Conversations Became Possibilities
During the exhibition, we spoke with visitors, retailers and people from different industries about materials, production, everyday rituals and the many ways these objects might live beyond the exhibition. Some conversations happened around a table, with collection sheets spread between us. Others lasted only a few minutes beside the display. Both mattered.
As a designer, it is easy to spend months thinking about proportions, surfaces, materials and details. But an exhibition introduces another kind of information: how someone approaches an object without explanation. What they touch first. What makes them stop. What makes them smile. What makes them ask a question.
A Small Dinosaur
One of my favorite moments began with a dinosaur. A father and his child stopped at the DinoVerse pieces. Instead of choosing the finished, colored version, they chose a simple raw concrete T-Rex coaster. It made me think about something I hadn't planned before the exhibition.
Perhaps an unfinished object doesn't always need to be unfinished. Perhaps it can be an invitation. A child could paint it, reinterpret it and make the object their own. The original design becomes only the beginning. Design doesn't necessarily have to end when an object leaves the designer's hands.
From Objects to Rituals
Coming to a food exhibition also made us look at the collection differently. We brought only a small selection of FOSSILGLOW objects — pieces that could naturally enter the rituals surrounding coffee, tea, desserts, serving and gathering. A tray was no longer simply a tray. A coaster became part of a cup of tea. A small dinosaur could sit beside a child's drink. Concrete, a material often associated with architecture and permanence, suddenly became part of much smaller and more intimate moments.
Perhaps that is what "Objects for Everyday Rituals" has always meant. Not designing objects merely to be looked at. Designing objects that quietly become part of life.
What We Take Home
I came to Hong Kong thinking about how to present objects. I leave thinking more about what happens after we make them. An object begins with a designer, but perhaps it only becomes complete when someone finds a place for it in their own life. On a table. Beside a cup of coffee. In the hands of a child holding a small concrete dinosaur.
Thank you, Hong Kong. Our first exhibition here began with objects. It ended with people. And perhaps that is where the next chapter of FOSSILGLOW begins.
FOSSILGLOW
Objects for Everyday Rituals
Hong Kong · 2026